


the breath and the dirt and the fires are burned

by neverwherever



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Depression, Fix-It, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Norse Bro Feels, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Thor (Marvel) Needs a Hug, me too tbh, not ignoring canon but also... not content with it, the torture of hope, thor trying to cope post endgame
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-28
Updated: 2020-01-10
Packaged: 2020-02-08 15:41:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 24,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18626230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neverwherever/pseuds/neverwherever
Summary: After it's over, Thor heads off-world with the Guardians of the Galaxy, but he's still got a long way to go.Meanwhile, Peter searches for Gamora, Gamora searches for herself, and Loki... well, we'll see.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> It's not that I hated Endgame... but I certainly didn't feel satisfied, especially regarding Thor, and was having a hard time coping so... that's what this is for. It's probably gratuitous but the alternative was bottling up my feelings about these damn characters forever and at least this way, maybe I can help someone else who's struggling to come to terms with this movie lol. Also this will probably be on the longer side but since I'm writing this on impulse I can't say for sure. 
> 
> Thor is not very kind to himself in this, but that doesn't mean I agree with him. I feel like I shouldn't have to clarify that but just in case. He's got some issues to work through, obviously.
> 
> Title is from Afterlife by Arcade Fire:
> 
>  
> 
> _Afterlife, oh my God, what an awful word_  
>  _After all the breath and the dirt_  
>  _And the fires are burned_  
>  _And after all this time_  
>  _And after all the ambulances go_  
>  _And after all the hangers-on are done_  
>  _Hanging on to the dead lights_  
>  _Of the afterglow_

Sometimes, even after it was all over, Thor would wake up shaking, his heart going so fast he felt surely that it would give out at any moment. His fists would clench tightly to the thin sheets beneath him and he’d stare blindly up at the _Benatar’s_ ceiling and wait desperately for the panic attack to pass.

Sometimes, it would only worsen, into hot tears and shaky sobs that he’d try with only partial success to suppress. Those times, Rocket and Groot would invariably stir in their bunks on the other side of the room, and quietly cross the room to comfort him: Rocket’s small hands resting gingerly in his hair, Groot growing small flowers that smelled of soothing lavender and jasmine. But neither would try to offer any empty words like, _It was only a dream,_ because they both knew all too well that the worst dreams were the memories.

Thor’s head was full of the dead. His mother impaled on a Dark Elf’s blade. His father dissolving like so much dust into the sea. Heimdall’s golden eyes going dark. Hundreds of Asgardian men, women and children lying slain like a carpet of fallen leaves. Asgard exploding in a terrible conflagration forever burned into his retinas.

And Natasha falling endlessly through the swirling snow. And Tony’s vacant stare and the smell of his burnt flesh. And Loki, always Loki, his desperate foolish bravery and the way he’d looked at Thor and said _Odinson_ and the sound of his neck snapping that would never, never leave Thor’s ears.

He’d said _the sun will shine on us again_ but all these years later, Thor was still shivering in the dark.

Nothing Rocket and Groot said would be able to change the truth of any of that. How none of it could be undone, even as half the universe breathed again. But they sat with him until his breathing slowed and the deep and desperate craving for a drink faded. And for that, Thor was grateful.

…

It was strange at first, traveling with the Guardians. Thor had always been quite good at making friends and fitting in with new people, but he’d somewhat lost his touch for it during those five dark years in that dank hut by the sea. Not to mention that when he’d first met them he’d been in peak physical form, and he recalled how all except Quill had become easily enamoured with him; now, he could not help but notice the astonished sideways glances they sometimes made at his enormous gut, though wisely they rarely mentioned it. This last was a bit of a surprise to Thor, considering Drax’s bluntness, Quill’s resentment, and the whole crew’s overall general lack of tact. He almost would have rather they joked about it than pity him in silence.

But Thor had cut himself off from alcohol (something that had been much, much harder than he’d expected, despite watching Valkyrie struggle with the same upon their arrival in New Asgard) and was slowly working off the excess weight with the combined exercise of the dangerous jobs he and the Guardians went on and some equipment he’d found in the underbelly of the ship. But it would be a long time, if ever, before he was as fit as he’d been on Sakaar. That was alright, though. Thor would never again be the person he was on Sakaar. He kept his hair long and his beard braided, despite how it aged him. He would not and could not pretend that he was still that foolish young arrogant prince who had taken what he had for granted.

 _Idiot child,_ he’d find himself thinking with surprising venom whenever his mind wandered back too far. _You have no idea what you’re going to lose. You should have stayed in exile on Midgard. You should have taken the blade meant for mother. You should have burned with Hela. You should have told Loki to take the Tesseract and run and let Thanos crush your skull._

Dark thoughts, dark moments. They came more often than Thor liked to admit.

Oh, but it really wasn’t all bad. As much as it hurt at times, as much as it felt like betrayal, leaving what was left of Asgard behind was the best way for Thor to try and forget his mistakes. He’d failed at being their king, and he hadn’t been able to save most of them, in the end. For a long time, that was something that he had thought he wouldn’t be able to live with. It was a weight that had pinned him to his bed more days than not in the last five years, a crushing grief and a failure as heavy as a planet that made the effort of getting out of bed, going outside, training, brushing his hair, and putting on a shirt simply … insurmountable. The Mighty Thor, brought pathetically low, he knew it even then; but he could not bring himself to stand.

Thor had tried to be a king. It was one of the few things he’d ever well and truly failed at. What good had the line of Odin done for Asgard in the past few years? Odin had always told him and Loki that they were both born to be kings… but in the end, neither of them were meant to be. Loki had been right to interrupt his first coronation, what felt like eons ago. His brother had stood by his throne on the other side of Ragnarok, but what good had that done him? No, that vision the Maximoff girl had given him was the truth all along… he was a Destroyer, and he had brought Asgard to ruin.

But when he saw his mother again, her words had been like benediction, like forgiveness. A balm on his soul, permission to let go of everything he had tried and failed to be. All his life he’d tried to be like Odin… but Odin’s mistakes had doomed Asgard as surely as his own. Frigga was the one he should have looked up to all along.

Valkyrie had already more or less been leading New Asgard anyway; it was more of a formality than anything, what he’d said to her before leaving on the Benatar. It was time for him to be something new. What exactly, he still didn’t know.

To be fair, the Guardians didn’t seem quite to know what to do with themselves either. They drifted from planet to planet, offering their help to anyone trying to recover from five years with a halved population and then a sudden restoration. In the space between, he played paper football with Nebula — something, Thor was both amused and saddened to discover, that Tony had taught them both — he sparred with Drax, he played video games with Groot, he built and repaired weapons with Rocket, he told Mantis dumb stories that made her scream with laughter.

And as for Quill… well, for all Thor’s posturing, he did defer to Quill most of the time — mostly because he didn’t have the heart to tease him when Quill spent so much of his time looking maudlin and grim. Thor figured it was the least he could do to let him believe he was in charge. For all Thor’s (admittedly rusty) charm, Quill remained frustratingly cool towards him and Nebula both.

“It is because he wishes Gamora was here instead of you,” Drax said in his usual direct manner one day, looking over at Quill asleep in the captain’s chair while the the rest of them picked at dehydrated rations for lunch.

Nebula’s jaw tightened and she looked down at her rations, nearly untouched.

“I am Groot,” Groot said, and Thor heard, _We all miss her._

“He was so different before,” Rocket said. “I mean, you could never get him to shut up or stand still. And now… he hardly ever speaks and he sleeps all the frickin’ time.”

“He is heartbroken,” Mantis said, her antennae lifting and glowing. “And he is… tortured by hope.”

Every night, after he thought everyone was asleep, Quill would run a search for Gamora’s face in intergalactic databases. The other Gamora, the one who did not know him, may have still been out there somewhere. If she showed up on surveillance anywhere, he would know. But even now, months later, there had still been no results. That didn’t stop Quill from returning to the database again and again.

Tortured by hope. Yes, Thor knew a thing or two about that.

_The sun will shine on us again._

The loud ringing noise of an incoming transmission jerked Thor out of his spiraling thoughts and Quill out of his sleep. Quill fumbled for the comm and answered it with a blurry, “H’llo?”

A moment later, Quill turned to look back at them and found them all staring his way. His brow furrowed. “What are you all lookin at?”

“Nothing,” they all said, with various degrees of sincerity, and Quill rolled his eyes.

“Whatever,” he said. “Thor, incoming holo-call for you. It’s that Valkyrie chick.”

Thor’s heart lifted a little and a smile spread across his face. “Wonderful,” he said, standing and rounding the table. “Patch her through.”

Thor usually only heard from New Asgard once a month or so. Seeing Valkyrie or Korg or Miek always lightened his spirits; they were among the few people left in the universe he had anything like a history with. They knew nothing of who he’d been before Sakaar, but Thor was almost glad of it; less painful that way.

Quill turned back around and pressed a button on the comm, and Valkyrie flickered into full-size translucent color in front of him. She smiled at the sight of him.

“Hey, Thor.” Her gaze moved past him. “Hello, Guardians.”

“Val,” Thor grinned, folding his arms and leaning back on the table. Behind him, the others waved and returned various greetings. Quill stood from the captain’s seat and pushed the comm into Thor’s hand as he left the room without a word. Valkyrie watched him go with a raised eyebrow, but said nothing about it. Thor could hear the other Guardians leaving the room with a little more subtlety.

Val’s eyes moved back to Thor. “You’re looking loads better than the last time I saw you.”

“You think so?” He flexed one arm and poked at his bicep, which was growing more defined each day. “I hadn’t even noticed. Must be my natural state.”

“That is a lie!” Drax piped up. “He checks himself in the mirror every day!”

Without looking, Thor picked up a bolt off the table and chucked it in Drax’s direction, gratified to hear his faint _ow _as he ducked out of the room.__

 

 

Valkyrie’s smile was amused. “I mean it,” she said. “It’s good to see you’re out in the action again.”

“Yes, well,” Thor said, and swiftly changed the subject. “How’s New Asgard?”

Valkyrie blew out a breath and pulled over a chair from out of Thor’s sight, settling heavily into it with an air of weary satisfaction. “Truly well, Thor. The fishing is good this season. And the seeds of the apple trees from Asgard, the ones Idunn saved and planted in the spring, have begun to sprout.”

Thor swallowed around a sudden lump in his throat at the thought that some of the fruit of Asgard’s soil yet lived. “Idunn always did have a magic touch with those trees.”

“And a child was born yesterday, to the lady Gerda,” Valkyrie went on. She rolled her eyes as she said, “She named her Thora, of all things.”

Thor chuckled. “I knew there was a reason I liked Gerda.”

Valkyrie glared at him. “You don’t like Gerda. What was it you called her? Stuffy old nobility, always with something to complain about?”

Thor shrugged, still smiling smugly. “I’ve no recollection.”

“Mmm hmm,” Valkyrie hummed doubtfully. “To tell you the truth, I was a little offended, especially since I was right there helping the midwife. But I doubt she’ll be the last child named after the royal family.”

Thor’s smile faded. “I’m not royal,” he said. “Not anymore. You’re the royal family now, if anyone.”

“Well, not really, actually,” Valkyrie said, casually picking at something on the bottom of her boot. “I’m more of a… what’s the word… prime minister, now.”

Thor frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Oh, it was something Korg read about,” Val continued, still cleaning her boot treads. “It’s not really practical to have a monarchy when I have no heirs and no intention of bearing any, so…” she shrugged. “Apparently it’s called a ‘parliamentary democracy.’ We let the people choose who will lead.”

Thor titled his head. “But they did choose you?”

“Oh, unanimously,” Valkyrie said, looking up. “But I’ve a parliament now, too… basically just a council as far as I can tell. Korg is sitting on it, and Idunn and Frey, and some representatives of the merchant and farming classes and such. Nine in all.”

“I see.” Thor paused, thinking it over. “That’s… unexpected, but… it sounds better.”

“Certainly,” Valkyrie said. “You should have heard Korg go on.” She pitched her voice higher and adopted Korg’s strange cadence. “‘Hey man, hereditary monarchy is archaic and inherently flawed, it’s gotta be representative system or revolution!’”

Thor laughed, and Valkyrie laughed with him even as she rolled her eyes. “Well, it’s better than hearing him talk about that moronic video game. And anyway, this way no one is tied to the throne… or what used to be a throne, I guess.”

Thor frowned. “Val… I did not mean to saddle you with something you didn’t want.”

She waved him off, saying, “You didn’t saddle me with anything, Thor. I like keeping busy these days. Plus, someone else could easily take my place. To hear Tyr talk, he certainly has political ambitions. Or, you know,” she glanced up at him, “You could always come back.”

Thor sighed. “Val…”

“I know, I know,” she said, holding up her hands in placation. “But you don’t have to be a king to be a leader. It’s not a cage anymore. And besides, half these people would still swear their loyalty to you over anyone else.”

“I don’t know why,” Thor admitted. “I only ever led them to ruin.”

Valkyrie’s gaze softened. “You did what you could, Thor.”

“Well, it wasn’t enough,” Thor bit out, straightening abruptly and beginning to pace. “We were a grand people before I came into the throne. Asgard was destroyed under my orders — ”

“You did it to defeat Hela —”

“Perhaps I shouldn’t have!” Thor whipped around. “Perhaps I should have left her there, and the Tesseract, and perhaps Thanos would have come to her and she would have killed him —”

“And then what?” Val snapped back. “She would have been free to wreak her own havoc on the universe. Or Thanos would have killed her, and been that much closer to his goal anyway, with none of us any the wiser to stop him.”

Thor slumped back against the table. “But half our people would still be alive. And Heimdall. And… and Loki.”

Valkyrie said nothing, and in the ensuing silence Thor pressed his palms to his suddenly burning eyes. In that darkness, knowing he did not have to see her face, he found himself speaking the words he hardly dared think.

“Sometimes I hate him,” he said. “Loki." He stopped, then forced himself to go on. "It’s not fair to him. But I can’t help it.”

Valkyrie still was silent, and Thor dared lower his hands, though he still could not look at her. “I’ve mourned him before, and every time I did, he always came back. How am I… how am I ever supposed to stop expecting him to do it again?”

Finally, he lifted his eyes to meet hers. Her face was placid, but great sadness glimmered in her eyes. “Thor,” she began, and then stopped. Sighed. Started again. “I’m no good at this comforting shit, you know.”

Despite it all, Thor chuckled. “I don’t know what you mean, Val. Your bedside manner is utterly charming.”

She gave him a half-hearted glare. “Look, it’s no secret I thought your brother was a prick,” she said.

“I know,” Thor said, trying not to flinch.

“But… I saw the way he was around you. He tried to hide it, but he always looked at you with just… total devotion.”

Thor looked to one side, heart aching. Devotion. He knew that look. It was the last thing he’d seen in his brother’s eyes. Just moments before the end.

“Loki loved you,” Valkyrie said simply. “Don’t you think, if he could come back to you, he would have by now?”

Thor took a few measured breaths in silence. “I don’t know. I never know with him. He ran when I wanted him to stay. And when I was sure he would run, he stayed.”

For a few moments, Val said nothing. When she did speak, it was with a distant gaze. “I don’t know, Thor. I wish I could tell you it’s worth hoping for. But I spent so long on Sakaar trying to deny, trying to forget… and looking back, it was all such wasted time. Grief always comes around. And I’m only just starting to see the other side of it.”

She paused again and dashed hastily at her eyes. “I’m sorry. I wish I could be more help. But I’ve never had a gift for wise words.”

Thor smiled at her. It was small and sad, but real. “Thank you, Valkyrie. Just seeing you is of a great help to me.”

“You too,” she said, softer than usual. “We miss you here, you know. Say you’ll come to the festival next month? For the anniversary of New Asgard?”

“Of course,” Thor said, pressing his fist to his heart. “You have my word.”

Valkyrie stood and reached out her hand as if to shake it. Thor did the same, his hand passing through hers with a faint electric buzz. “It’ll get better, Thor,” she said, her gaze steady and piercing.

“I know,” Thor said, and pressed the button on the comm to end the transmission. Valkyrie vanished, and Thor stood alone.

He did know, he did. But he also knew, from the past fifteen or so years, that there was always, always, further to fall.

…

Sunlight was streaming through the tall windows in Thor’s chambers in Asgard, rich orange sunlight as the sun itself sank below the waters at the edge of the planet.

Thor walked through the doorway to the room gently, as if walking too loudly would cause the scene to crumble below his feet. The curtains billowed gently in the evening breeze, and Thor could hear the good-natured cheers of warriors in the training arena outside. The sweet smell of Asgard’s golden summertime filled his lungs, and Thor was so lost in the sensations he thought he’d never feel again that he didn’t even notice Loki sitting sprawled across the long couch by his fireplace until he said,

“So, what did father want to talk about?”

Thor jumped a little, and turned to stare openly at his brother. He looked astonishingly young, his dark hair shorter than it had been in years, just barely curling around the bottoms of his ears. But his sharp gaze was the same as it had ever been. As Thor continued to stare and said nothing, he lifted an eyebrow.

“Thor? Hello?”

“Loki,” was all Thor could manage, suddenly consumed by the last time he had been in these halls, the last time he’d seen Loki sprawled out like this, lazing in his cell and tossing a cup in the air. And Thor was seized by the same terror he’d felt when he and Rocket had appeared in those familiar dungeons: that if he saw Loki, he would not be able to stop himself from reaching out to him and telling him everything he never got to say, and he would be unable to bear the knowledge that this Loki right here would someday meet his end in the clutch of Thanos’ fist. It was a terror that Loki would look at him and see only something to be disgusted by, something to sneer at, that he would turn away from Thor’s open hands and slide the cruel blade of his words between Thor’s ribs.

So Thor had snuck by, not daring to risk any of it. But now, Loki had seen him. Loki was seeing him.

“Have you gone daft?” Loki asked. He looked thoughtful for a moment, then amended. “Well, daft- _er_.”

“I-”

“He found out about what happened on Alfheim, didn’t he? I did tell you not to go after that elven princess.”

Thor took a breath. “This is a memory,” he said. “A dream.”

Loki blinked. “Well, yes,” he said. “But it’s one of the more pleasant ones. I would have thought you’d appreciate that.”

“You made this?” Thor asked.

Loki scoffed, standing and sauntering over to him. “Don’t sound so surprised. Illusions are my specialty, after all — or did you forget? I can choose a different one, if you’d like.”

Even as he said it, Asgard’s golden walls peeled away in a flash of golden-green light and Thor found himself sitting opposite Loki at a table in the Statesman with Valkyrie, Heimdall, and the Hulk. Loki, who looked now just as he had before his death, was a silhouette against the port hull that looked out into the universe, shining eternally with billions of stars and the kaleidoscopic colors of old supernovas. There were cards on the table and in their hands.

“Got any fours?” Hulk asked gruffly.

“Go fish,” Heimdall said imperiously.

Hulk growled. “LYING!” He slammed his fist on the table, cracking it down the middle.

“I never lie,” Heimdall replied, completely straight-faced, and Valkyrie, her cheeks rosy with drink, actually giggled into her cards.

“My turn,” Heimdall continued. “Thor,” he said, turning his golden gaze upon him, “Got any kings?”

Thor, in fact, had three kings, something Heimdall the All-Seeing would surely know, but Thor paid him no mind, his eyes still fixed on Loki.

“Loki, enough of this,” he said. “Let me speak to you plainly.”

Loki’s gaze was steady. “Very well, brother,” he said. “If that’s what you wish.”

Once more the gold-green light washed over the room, and then they were standing on that cliff in Norway where everything had started to end. But Thor didn’t even care. He stepped closer to Loki and reached out a hand. Loki watched him, unflinching as Thor touched the side of his neck. There were no bruises there. No bulging vertebrae or broken veins. This was Loki at his peak, a tall graceful figure of lean strength, clad in flowing green, dark hair curling naturally past his shoulders and swept neatly back from his clear green eyes.

“I didn’t mean what I said,” Thor blurted out. “The last thing I said. To you. I didn’t mean it.”

“I know,” Loki said. “Don’t worry about that, Thor.”

“You should have run,” he said. “You should have let him kill me.”

“Perhaps I should have,” Loki said. “But you are more a fool than I realized if you think that I could have.”

Thor’s eyes burned. “I miss you.”

Loki’s eyes were soft. “I know that too.”

Thor brought his other hand up to frame Loki’s face, to hold him there and look back and forth between Loki’s eyes as his brother looked steadily back.

“Are you real?” Thor whispered.

Loki’s eyes drifted shut, and his voice was barely more than a murmur when he said, “Is anything real, in dreams?”

…

Thor awoke slowly and steadily, like rising to the surface of water. His eyes, when he opened them, were dry, but his chest ached in a peculiar way that was not entirely unpleasant. A few moments later, he realized he could hear the sound of music playing faintly elsewhere in the ship.

Thor stood and quietly made his way up to the main room of the _Benatar_ , following the sound of guitar and a woman’s voice singing soft and sad and sweet.

“ _Take my love, take it down…_ ”

Quill was slumped in the captain’s seat, asleep again. Thor wondered to himself how often he actually slept in his own bunk. The bunk, Thor supposed, that he may have once shared with Gamora. The wheels of one of his cassettes spun round and round in the music player built into the ship.

“ _Climb a mountain and turn around…_ ”

The surveillance database was running at top speed on the screen in front of Quill as he snored gently, running through hundreds of images per second, too fast for Thor to make any of them out. The image of Gamora stared solemnly out at him from one corner.

“ _And if you see my reflection in the snow-covered hills… _”__  

Thor watched the images fly by for a few moments before hesitantly reaching out to type Loki’s name into the database. An image taken of him on Midgard during that fateful invasion appeared next to Gamora’s, his golden horns curving high above him. Thor watched as the surveillance scans paused for a brief second, processing the new data input, before racing off again in a blur of indiscernible shapes and colors.

“ _The landslide will bring it down…_ ”

The cassette clicked to a stop and the music faded, but Thor stayed where he was, watching the scanner go on endlessly.

__He stood there for a long time._ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song at the end is Landslide by Fleetwood Mac. Do yourself a favor and go cry listening to it.


	2. Chapter 2

Through some unspoken consensus, the path of their wanderings eventually took them towards Xandar.

The Guardians were visibly apprehensive as they approached the planet and prepared to enter the atmosphere. Though they spoke little of it, Thor gathered that they had accomplished some feat of heroism the last time they were there, protecting the Xandarians and the Power Stone from a Kree madman who was an ally of Thanos. How it must have cut them, then, when Thor told them what had happened since.  


One week before the worst day of Thor’s long life, as the _Statesman_ had continued its doomed voyage towards Midgard, they had managed to make contact with a passing Nova Corps ship. Thor had planned to ask them for aid; though Asgard and the Nova Corps had not often affiliated with each other before, there had once existed between them a mutual respect as two of the most powerful forces in the galaxy. But where Thor had hoped to receive glad tidings of fresh water and food for the starving people of Asgard, he got only terrible news.

“Xandar is decimated,” the Nova Corps officer said, his voice audibly shaking through the crackling comm. “The Nova Corps is… halved. We have nothing to offer you, I’m sorry.”

Thor, mentally reeling from the news, could only think to say, “Decimated? How?”

“The Mad Titan,” the officer said, steely hatred creeping into his voice. “He came upon us like a firestorm — he killed Nova Prime — he ripped the Power Stone from our vaults — he lined us up in two rows and slaughtered one while the other watched…”

Another mighty empire brought low, Thor thought distantly. Stunned, he repeated, “The Mad Titan? Who is that?”

And both the Nova Corps officer and Loki said in unison, “Thanos.”

Thor turned his head to look at his brother beside him. Loki was even paler than usual, and his eyes were solemn and large.

“Loki,” Thor said slowly, forgetting all about the comm in his hand, “What do you know of this?”

Loki had told him, then, of where exactly he had landed after falling from the Bifrost years ago. He told him of Thanos’ cruel methods, his fanatic followers, his twisted vision. He told him everything, including that he had taken the Tesseract from Asgard’s vault and thus placed a target upon all their backs.

They had tried to prepare for the eventuality of an attack, but in the end, with most of their warriors having perished by Hela’s hand and those Asgardians that remained weakened by their lack of resources, their contingency plans had not been enough.

After Thanos’ ship rose into sight like a great white shark breaching the ocean’s surface, after the alarms had been activated, after the fighting and the screaming had begun, Thor had seized Loki by the shoulders and said,

“No matter what happens, keep the Tesseract safe.” He shook him a little, for emphasis. “Don’t give it to him. No matter _what_ , Loki.”

Loki, looking frightened, had nodded, saying, “Yes, alright, I know, Thor.”

Then he had promptly broken that assurance.

To Loki’s credit, he had put up a decent front. An outsider could very well have believed that Loki cared not whether Thor died. But Thanos, who had held Loki beneath his thumb for interminable months in the void, who had taken him apart in every way, who had cracked open his very mind, knew better than anyone that the fastest way to break Loki was by making Thor scream.

Ah, but Thor could not fault his brother. For who was to say, were the situation reversed, that Thor would not have done the same? The fate of the universe was in the balance, and even having seen the consequences firsthand, Thor could still not say for certain whether he could have sacrificed Loki to save it. Perhaps it was for the best that he had never been granted that choice.

“This is Star-Lord, captain of the _Benatar_ , requesting atmospheric entry,” Quill was saying as Thor brooded, in communication with Xandar below.

“What are your intentions on Xandar?” the male voice said curtly on the other end.

“We’re here to offer aid with recuperation efforts, and meet with the new Nova Prime.” He paused, then added, “We’re, uh, the Guardians of the Galaxy— you might remember us— we kinda saved the planet the last time we were here?”

There was a long, long pause. Then, the comm crackled back to life on the other end.

“Nova Prime Dey has granted you both entry and an audience,” the voice said. “You may land.”

“Did he say… _Dey_ is the new Nova Prime?” Rocket said disbelievingly.

“Yeah, wow, I had no clue he was that high up in the ranks,” Quill said. “Frankly I always pegged him as the donut-munching cop type.”

That sounded like the sort of Midgardian expression Tony would say ( _would have_ said, _used to_ say, such mental corrections were common these days) but Thor was not sure what it meant. However, when they landed and entered the Nova Corps headquarters, he too was surprised by the man who greeted them.

Nova Prime Rael had been a tall, stern, commanding woman, who Thor recalled meeting exactly once as a young and foolish prince during a diplomatic excursion Odin had taken him on in his vain attempts to teach Thor the business of governance.

The man who had taken her place since her death was her opposite in many ways. He was rather stout, with a kindly looking face and a receding hairline of gingery curly hair. When he spoke, his voice sounded better suited to telling children tales of thrilling bilgesnipe hunts than commanding the largest policing force in the galaxy. Well, what had once been the largest policing force in the galaxy.

“Star-Lord!” he exclaimed as he shook Quill’s hand. “Didn’t think I’d ever see you on this planet again. Frankly, I thought you whole lot would be back in prison by now. Although, uh,” he glanced at the rest of them. “I see you’ve picked up a few members.”

Quill introduced Mantis, who said hello in her strange lilting way and stared unrelentingly at Dey with her buglike eyes.

Thor stepped forward without waiting for Quill’s introduction and took Dey’s hand firmly in his own.

“Greetings, Nova Prime, I am Thor Odinson of Asgard,” he said, inclining his head slightly in respect learned from centuries of royal duties.

“You’re Thor? _The_ Thor?” Dey said, looking at him with faint surprise. “Wow. Well, it’s a pleasure to meet you. We heard about Asgard. And we found the remnants of your ship. We assumed you were among the dead.”

 _If only_ , Thor caught himself thinking, but cut that familiar line of thought off quickly. “I am quite difficult to kill, I assure you,” he said instead. “Many, many have tried.”

Finally, Nebula stepped forward and nearly crushed the man’s hand in her grip.

“Say, I think I’ve seen your face on our most wanted lists,” Dey said. “Aren’t you an intergalactic criminal?”

“Who here hasn’t been an intergalactic criminal once or twice,” Rocket muttered.

“I was a child of Thanos, once,” Nebula said, more loudly, and Thor did not think he imagined everyone in the room, even the guards standing silently along the walls, tensing at the name. “I’ve long since escaped his service, and since his death I’ve been traveling with these… Guardians.”

Dey’s genial tone sombered as he asked, “Were you the ones that killed him?”

There was a pause as they all pondered how to answer a question that should not have been so complicated.

“Thor did,” Rocket eventually offered.

“Yes,” Thor admitted. “I killed him. One of him.” More quietly, he muttered, “Not really the one that mattered, though, I suppose…”

“Wait, what do you mean, one of him?” Dey said, brow furrowed.

“I am Groot,” Groot began, but Thor interrupted.

“It is a long tale,” he said. “My blade separated Thanos’ head from his shoulders, yes, but the return of the vanished is due to a great Terran man by the name of Bruce Banner, and his ultimate defeat is thanks to another Terran hero by the name of Tony Stark, who fell honorably in the battle.”

 _Banner crippled and Stark dead, and what use were you during any of it?_ Thor ignored this thought, as he had learned to do with many others like it.

It hurt Thor a little to say Tony’s name, but Dey just said, “Huh. Never heard of him, but we’ll have to get a plaque made or something. Not,” he added, turning and beckoning for them to follow him, “That the return of the vanished solved all our problems.”

Dey led them into the next room, where a holographic model of Xandar hovered above a table in the center. Dey waved his hand and the globe spun and zoomed in on the landmass they were currently on.

“You said you wanted to help us, right? Well, we’ve been having a bit of a… pest problem.”

“We have not come to kill bugs,” Drax said, sounding offended. Then, after a thought, added, “Unless they are very, very large bugs.”

“Oh, they’re large, all right,” Dey said. “And they’re not bugs.”

A beacon lit up on the hologram indicating a region some distance west of the Xandarian capital in which they now stood. “A few decades ago, when Xandar was doing major infrastructure overhauls, we brought in a herd of creatures from the planet Revis that we call rockworms. They’re capable of quickly devouring rock and soil, which worked a lot more efficiently than any of the tech we had to build sewers and tunnels and such. They take a lot of manpower to keep under control, but we had them confined to the rockworm farms in this area.”

The hologram zoomed in even further, and the beacon separated into points of light indicating the locations of the farms. The lights illuminated the dark look on Dey’s face as he said, “When Thanos came and we lost half those farmers, and then half again, the farms fell apart and the rockworms were released into the wild. They went feral within months. They were reduced by the Vanishing, of course, but they breed fast, especially now that they’re back to their full numbers. And, as I said, they’re big.”

The holographic image switched to a projection of a Xandarian farmer fighting to tie down a rockworm, which reared up to thrice the man’s height. The creature looked more like a serpent than a worm, Thor thought, with a long scaly body and slit-pupiled yellow eyes. Instead of fangs, however, Thor saw rows and rows of rotating teeth when the creature opened its mouth and roared.

“At our full strength, this wouldn’t be a problem,” Dey went on. “But we were weakened even before the Vanishing and now… many of us are struggling to adjust.”

“What do you want us to do?” Nebula asked. “Kill them all?”

“Well, no,” Dey said. “Not all. Of course, it might help to thin the herd a little, but mainly we just need you to kill one.”

The image changed back to a map, this time a 3-D terrain with a beacon hovering over the tallest mountain in a range that separated the Xandarian capital from the rest of the continent.

“The rockworms, in their natural habitat, have a hive-like structure centered around a queen,” Dey explained. “Without one, the strongest in the herd will begin to grow to be larger and more aggressive than the rest. To keep them domesticated and under our control, we have to keep a constant eye out for an emerging queen and kill her before she gains the loyalty of the herd. Obviously, we haven’t been doing that these past years, and their new queen has had all that time to get bigger and more ferocious. She’s tunneled into the heart of this mountain, surrounded by hundreds of fiercely protective rockworms.”

“Ok…” Quill said, squinting at the hologram. “That’s unfortunate, yeah, but I mean… can’t the full force of the Nova Corps take out one big snake?”

“Well, as I’ve said, we are not at full force,” Dey said, expression hardening. “Many of our weapons were destroyed in Thanos’ invasion. Those that remain could not kill the queen without leveling the whole mountain, which would bring a massive avalanche onto the capital. We have to send individual squads into the tunnels. If they make it through the protective hordes — who have hides resistant to laser blasts, by the way — the queen has an additional defense.”

The hologram changed once more, this time displaying a diagram of the inner workings of a rockworm.

“When a queen has fully established herself, it triggers a change in her biology.” The diagram showed a sac-like shape growing above the creature’s jaws. “Since she becomes stationary, she needs a better way of defending herself.” In front of the rockworm’s many teeth, two long, sharp fangs extended down from the top jaw. “So she becomes venomous.”

“Of course she does,” Quill muttered, rubbing at one eye.

The hologram dissipated, and Dey stood with hands folded behind his back, looking grave. “If we do not contain the rockworms, they will start tunneling under the city, causing sinkholes and flooding. We cannot afford the literal collapse of our society on top of the economic and, frankly, mental collapse that we already face.” He hesitated. “Unfortunately, we don’t have much to offer you in return. We’ve funneled everything we have into rebuilding after the attack. But I know that you are an… honorable bunch. Will you help us?”

By the way he said it, Thor figured that even he knew that “honorable” was not a word most people would think to use to describe the Guardians, but none of them disputed the obvious attempt at flattery. Thor hefted Stormbreaker.

“Of course we’ll help,” he said with a smile. “Sounds like great fun, killing a giant venomous snake! You know,” he said as an aside to Mantis, who happened to be standing next to him, “I’ve always loved snakes.”

It was meant to be a jest, but as always, it brought up that old memory that he had once looked upon so fondly— but now, like most thoughts of Loki, and Asgard, and his squandered youth, it brought nothing but pain.

_This one time when we were children he transformed himself into a snake-_

Thor swiftly killed the thought, but Mantis must have picked up on his sudden surge of melancholy, for she gave him a sad look. Thor turned away abruptly.

Quill was looking at him with faint annoyance — for making the decision for them, Thor supposed.

“Yeah, we’ll do it, Dey,” Quill said. “It’s the least we can do. I’m sorry we weren’t here to help when Thanos attacked.”

“Probably just as well,” Dey said. “He would have killed you all easily.”

“Well I mean, probably not _that_ easily-” Quill began to protest.

“So like, no payment at all?” Rocket interrupted.

Groot hit him on the arm, but Dey smiled a little.

“We can give you free lodging while you’re here, and provide food and drink,” he said.

Rocket shrugged. “Good enough for me. Anything’s better than that lumpy mattress on the ship.”

“Wonderful,” Dey said, and gestured for an attendant to come over to them. “Nia will show you to your rooms. Let’s see, there’s… eight of you?” His brow furrowed. “Wait. Didn’t you use to have another member? A Zen-Whoberi, wasn’t she?”

For several long moments, no one said anything. Nebula’s hands tightened into fists, and Quill went very, very still.

Finally, Drax said, with a surprising degree of tact, “Yes, she was.”

Quill turned on his heel and sped from the room, the attendant hurrying after him.

…

When twilight had fallen over Xandar, Thor left his rooms and went to walk about the city. The streets were quiet, some of them darkened and abandoned completely. While reconstruction efforts were clearly underway, everywhere he turned he could see evidence of what Thanos had done to these people. Here, a leveled building; there, a collapsed bridge; beneath his feet, faded stains that could not be scrubbed out from the pavement.

Just like Asgard, Xandar had been halved, and then quartered within days. It seemed that, in the aftermath, most of the city’s remaining population had moved inwards towards the heart of the city, leaving whole blocks along the outer edges to crumble and rot. Now, the returned were beginning to clean up at least some of those areas and inhabit those homes again, but there was still a gaping absence to be felt.

It felt like New Asgard, that lacking. Outwardly, the city was recovering, learning to live with this new reality. But inwardly, there was not a single person who did not still mourn. Like New Asgard, Xandar would not be getting back everything it had lost. Like Asgard, Xandar had been struck down at the height of its power and kicked repeatedly while curled up on the ground, praying for mercy.

There were a few places, though, that were as lively as Thor imagined they had ever been: the taverns. That was where Quill had gone, Thor knew, and Rocket and Groot as well.

“We’re going for a drink,” Rocket had told Thor when he had encountered them in the hall between their rooms. There had been a stilted pause, then, an empty space where Thor knew, in another life, Rocket would have said, “Want to come with?”

In that other life, Thor would have heartily agreed, and they would have spent a long and cheerful night in the tavern, Thor challenging everyone in the bar to drinking contests and tests of strength and roaring with good-natured laughter when he won every time. He would have stood on a table and led the whole tavern in song, would have regaled them with tales of his own adventures. When the tavern closed, Thor would have picked Rocket up from where he’d passed out on the floor and gently flung him over his shoulder and leaned drunkenly on Groot as they staggered back to one of their rooms and all fallen asleep inebriated and content.

But in this life, Thor had not touched alcohol in months and the taste of beer was now synonymous with grief and emptiness and long sunless days when Thor drank just to try and forget that crushing weight on his heart, if only for a moment, _please, just for one moment_. In this life, Thor’s body would, at the worst of times, desperately crave a drink where before it would have only pleasantly longed for one. In this life, Rocket only said, “We’ll see you later,” and passed him by.

Now, walking down the street where all the taverns were sat side by side, windows lit and full of noise, Thor lingered in doorways but dared not enter. He could smell the liquor and spirits wafting out from each establishment; alcohol smelled much the same no matter the realm or planet. It was a bad idea to be here, Thor knew, and he was in the midst of battling a particularly strong surge of craving when he heard a breathy moan in the alley just to his right.

Instinctively, without thinking, he turned his head, and there he saw Quill, leaning against one of the alley walls with his hands on the hips of a woman in a leather coat with long dark reddish hair. They were kissing, deeply and passionately. The woman had Quill pinned against the wall with the full weight of her body and Quill’s eyes were tightly shut.

This, Thor knew, was not something he was meant to see, but he found himself unable to look away.

 _Like watching a car wreck,_ Tony’s voice said in his head, unbidden, as Quill’s hands wandered up the back of the woman's jacket. Though he understood little of the curious machines Midgardians drove around in, he thought he could understand that inevitable gravity of disaster as the woman broke off the kiss and leaned in to whisper something into Quill’s ear.

Abruptly, Quill’s hands moved back down to her hips and shoved her roughly away.

“Hey!” she said, but Quill was already pushing off the wall and staggering towards the opening of the alley.

“S’rry,” he slurred. “I can’t- I can’t fuckin’ do this-”

He burst into the street and tripped, stumbling right into Thor. He caught himself against Thor and looked, squinting, up at him. His pupils were huge and he stank of liquor. “Why are you here?” he said. Then, again, but different, “Why are _you_ here?”

“I… I don’t-”

“Whatever, man,” Quill interrupted, and pushed himself off of Thor, veering back in the direction Thor had come.

The woman stepped out of the alley. Apart from the hair, she did not, Thor thought, look very much like Gamora at all.

“Asshole!” she shouted at Quill’s retreating back. She gave Thor a disdainful glare and said, “Creep,” before turning and heading back into the bar she and Quill must have come from.

 _I don’t know_ , that was what he was going to say to Quill, because he knew Quill meant, _why not Gamora_ , and for that matter, Thor, why not anyone else? Why not everyone you were supposed to save? Why do you get to stand here and live and breathe and walk beneath the stars when Gamora doesn’t and Loki doesn’t and Natasha doesn’t and Tony doesn’t? Why do you get to go on when, let’s face it, Thor, so often during the past five years and even, still, right now, you don’t even really _want_ to?

 _I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know_.

Thor looked through the window of the nearest tavern. It was dark inside, lit only by colorful neon that illuminated vague masses of swaying bodies. No one in there would know him. No one would care what he did, or what happened to him. No one would remember him tomorrow. No one would stop him from making a mistake or two or three or four or however many it took to stop him thinking. No one would expect any better.

 _What the hell_ , Thor thought, darkly, and went in.

…

_Knock knock knock knock knock knock knock knock knock kno-_

The door swung sharply open and Thor fell through the doorway, only just barely catching himself on the frame.

“What,” Nebula snapped, sharp as a scalpel.

Thor only stared at her for a long moment, her eyes dark as black holes, this daughter of Thanos, torn apart and put back together until she was as he wanted her.

“There had _better_ be a good reason for waking me at this hour-”

“Did you know Loki?” Thor asked. The world swam. His throat ached from saying it.

Nebula’s face was blank. “What,” she said, her hoarse mechanical voice gone dull.

“Loki,” Thor said again. “He’s my, he was, he is, my brother. Did you _know_ him?”

“You’re drunk,” she said coldly, and tried to close the door on him, but Thor pushed his way all the way into the room and stood swaying before her.

“You were with Thanos. And he was with Thanos. At the same time,” Thor explained, enunciating carefully. “Did you know him?”

Nebula still looked like she wanted to force him out, and Thor knew that right now, she probably could, but instead she said, “‘Know’ is a strong word. I knew of him. We… spoke a few times.”

“Were you one of his torturers?” Thor asked, not even pausing to think if he wanted to know.

Nebula’s expression shuttered. “I’m not going to answer that,” she said.

So yes, then. Rage rose up in Thor’s throat like bile, and for a moment he wanted to summon Stormbreaker and swing it at her head, but then she looked away slightly and the moonlight caught on the metal embedded into her skull and the fire drained out of Thor in an instant as he remembered that what Thanos had done to Loki— hurt him, twisted his mind, shaped him into a weapon— he had done to Nebula a thousand times over.

“Did he call for me?” Thor asked, not pausing to think which answer would hurt him more, his vision already blurring. “When you- when they- when Thanos tortured him... did he call for me?”

The world was reduced to a watery swirl of dark colors so that Thor could not see if there was pity in her eyes when she said, softly, “At first.”

Tears rolled hot down Thor’s face and he clenched his eyes shut, futilely. Each breath he took into his lungs trembled on the very edge of a sob.

“Thor,” Nebula said, her voice hard as it always was but her touch perhaps nearly gentle as she nudged him back out the door. “Go to bed. Go to sleep. You will regret this in the morning.”

She directed him down the hall to his rooms and opened the door, her hand on his back firmly leading him inside. Thor took the three stumbling steps to the bed and collapsed onto it, face first. Several long moments passed before he heard the door click softly closed, and he at last let his hitching breaths devolve into gasping cries.

“Loki,” he called out to no one, and he was drunk, so drunk, and everything was madly spinning, and when he closed his eyes it felt as if his body was careening, untethered, through oblivion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (I do promise we'll get to the actual fix-it part of this fic, eventually.)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just want to thank everyone for all the support and feedback you've given me on this story so far. This is the best reception I've ever gotten for a fic and I cherish every single kudos, bookmark and comment I receive. You are all wonderful and I am glad we can suffer through our post-Endgame Thor feels together.
> 
> I apologize for the long wait between the last chapter and this one, and apologize in advance because I am putting up these chapters as I write them and so can't promise any regular posting schedule, especially since I'm heading into a very busy summer. I really appreciate you all for sticking with me through my wildly unpredictable updates lol.
> 
> Enjoy the chapter!

Breakfast the next morning was a miserable affair.

Drax ate with hearty gusto and talked cheerily with Mantis, seemingly oblivious that the rest of them were sitting in silence, studiously avoiding each other’s gazes.

Thor had awoken that morning to a faceful of cold water and, gasping, had blinked the water out of his eyes to see Rocket standing over him on the bed with an empty glass in hand. His furry face was unreadable as he said,

“We’re planning on heading out soon. You’re probably gonna want to come eat something first.” He paused, then added, “And take a shower. You smell like a brewhouse.”

Before Thor could say anything, he hopped off the bed and left. Thor felt sick to his stomach more due to the flat disappointment in Rocket’s blunt words than to the hangover that took sudden and fierce hold of him. He’d dragged his aching body out of bed and into the shower where he turned the water as cold as it would go and stood there shivering for long minutes, letting it soothe the pounding in his head and fruitlessly trying to wash away the blurry memories of what Nebula had said to him.

Nebula was now scowling down at her plate and cutting her food with the same intense concentration that she gave everything. Thor had risked a few glances her way but she had not looked up once. Quill, on the other hand, had had no trouble meeting his eyes in shared hungover misery, so Thor figured he must not remember their encounter. Thor wondered if he remembered anything at all; his fingers kept wandering with concerned distraction towards a bruise low down on his neck. 

Groot sat between Thor and Rocket, and Thor was grateful for that buffer, because it was Rocket more than anyone else who he was most ashamed to face. It was Rocket who had, since the very beginning, offered his own brand of rough-edged compassion to Thor as he struggled with his grief and rage and vengeful recklessness. It was Rocket who had come with Bruce to drag him out of that stinking hut in New Asgard, its very foundations soaked with alcohol. It was Rocket who had talked him through nightmares and panic attacks and the painful first weeks in which he had gone sober. It was Rocket, Thor couldn’t help but feel, that he had let down the most by letting himself slip last night.

Groot had been there for much of all that, too, of course, but he did not look at Thor any differently on this particular morning, and he bumped his arm against Thor’s in a comforting manner as he passed him a bowl full of eggs of some sort. Thor gave him a grateful smile and did his best to choke down some food even as his stomach roiled. He thought longingly of the days when he could go with Sif and the Warriors Three to every tavern in Asgard in a single night and still wake in the morning ready to eat with gusto and train with enthusiasm and drag Loki from the palace library to go with him on a hunt. That felt like ten thousand years ago, now, though in truth it had been closer to twenty.

At the other end of the table, Mantis said something that made Drax tip back his head and roar with his usual loud laughter. Mantis giggled uncertainly, clearly not sure what she had done that was funny, and Quill and Thor winced in unison as the sound pierced their brains like a blunt spike.

A few minutes later, Dey joined them all, sweeping into the room with a few guards at his side and a cheery greeting.

“Good morning, Guardians,” he said. “Are you ready to go out on the job today?”

“We are!” Drax exclaimed.

“I am Groot,” Groot stated.

“Mergh,” Quill said, pressing one fist to his mouth and choking back a gag.

The rest of them made mumbled sounds of agreement.

“... Right,” Dey said, looking doubtful. He seemed to consider, for a moment, asking after how they fared, but by the look on his face decided that it wouldn’t be worth the trouble of dealing with their collective issues. “Well, if you’re all finished with breakfast, I’ll have these officers take you out to the mountains. Hopefully by the end of the day we can have this rockworm problem resolved.”

Thor, glad of an excuse to not sit in awkward silence around this table any longer, stood up at once.

“Worry not,” he told Dey. “We have all faced fiercer foes than these serpents. I wager we can have this finished within the hour."

…

An hour later, Stormbreaker took the head off of what must surely be the hundredth rockworm, and Thor, sweating, took a moment to be glad that he had not actually placed any money on that wager.

“DUCK,” Quill shouted, and Thor reacted without question, rolling out of the way as Quill shot his blaster at a rockworm that was diving for his head. The blast did nothing but knock the creature back a few yards, but Mantis was there to touch her hand to the creature’s scaly hide and put it to sleep, which made it no effort at all for Nebula to decapitate the beast with one brutal sweep of her blade.

“Blasters don’t work on these things, dumbass!” Rocket shouted.  

“I know that!” Quill yelled back. “I lost my knife in the last tunnel, the frickin’ worm almost took my whole hand off and ate it!”

“This is why you always carry at least three weapons at all times!” Rocket answered, and aimed his own gun at a rockworm that was breaking through one wall, its teeth churning and crushing solid rock into dust. He fired, and the thing died screeching in a barrage of bullets.

“We must be getting close to the queen,” Thor bellowed; a rockworm dove at him and he knocked it away with the blunt edge of his axe, where Drax descended on it with a roar, his twin blades flashing in the dim light that came off their flashlights. “They seem to be coming at us much faster now!”

Three more rockworms leapt out of the darkness at them, but they did not get far before Groot stretched out one long arm and impaled them all at once.

“I am Groot!” he cried.

“Groot’s right, we just gotta keep moving!” Rocket translated.

“On it,” Nebula said, and sped forward into the dark, the rest of them quickly following after.

They followed the natural bend of the tunnel, cutting down more and more rockworms as they went, until suddenly the low ceiling of the tunnel opened up into a huge cavern. Thin streams of sunlight came through holes riddled through the top of the mountain high above, illuminating dozens of tunnel openings on every wall of the cavern. In the middle, a huge rockworm lay coiled in a great pile of gleaming black scales. As they burst into the cavern, it lifted its great head and narrowed slitted yellow eyes at them.

There was a beat of silence, then Quill said, almost conversationally, “So I’m thinking maybe that’s the queen.”

“Obviously,” Drax said.

The creature suddenly bared its very sharp fangs and hissed.

“SCATTER!” Quill shouted, and they all dove in separate directions as the queen rockworm shot forward and closed her jaws around the space where they had all been a mere moment before. Venom dripped from her mouth and sizzled menacingly on the stones.

“Watch the fangs, watch the fangs!” Rocket cried, firing bullets that mostly just made the creature screech in irritation.

“I will put her to slee-” Mantis began, but then the end of the queen’s tail whipped around and hit her hard; she flew into a wall and slid, unconscious, to the floor.

“Mantis!” Drax roared, and ran towards her, only to get knocked aside by the tail as it whipped back.

“HEY!” Quill shouted, firing futile blasts at the beasts. She struck at him with blinding speed, and the thrusters on his shoes took him out of the way with a mere half-second to spare.

A rush of rage flooded Thor’s veins. He’d only known most of these Guardians for a short time, but they were his friends, and he was far too short of friends these days. He was _not_ going to lose anyone else, certainly not to some idiotic _snake._

With a roar, he let the lightning flood his veins and charged the creature head on. He flung himself at her head, axe raised high; she darted out of the way, and his blade landed in her side instead of her skull, buried deep. She shrieked as electricity flooded her body and jerked violently so that Thor went flying into a wall, just as Drax and Mantis had. However, Asgardians were built of sturdier stuff, and he bounced back up right away. He thrust out his hand to call Stormbreaker, and the axe flew out of the creature’s side with a gushing spray of blood.

The queen turned her head to stare at him with murder in her slitted eyes. Thor met her gaze without fear and bared his teeth in a wild grin. The joy of battle fueled the beat of his heart and the helplessness that had plagued him for the past five years burned away in the face of a foe he could defeat.

“Try me,” he taunted.

“Thor, don’t!” Thor heard Rocket cry, in the moment just before the creature struck.

Thor did not try to dodge out of the way of the beast’s gaping maw. Instead, he raised Stormbreaker, and as the queen tried to close her jaws around him, the blade sunk deep into the roof of her mouth.

She screeched loudly and horribly, even louder for Thor, positioned as he was practically inside her mouth, unable to see anything but her hundreds of teeth and the dark wet tunnel of her throat. Her hot and fetid breath washed over him and she struggled to fling him off of her, but Thor was flooded with adrenaline and lightning both and refused to let go. Instead, he roared back at her, and called the storm.

Outside the mountain, dark clouds formed around its peak, flashing with white fire, and thunder rumbled down into the valley and all throughout the mountain’s many tunnels. Inside the cavern, Thor’s one blue eye filled with crackling light, and with a great cry, he summoned a massive strike of lightning that crashed through one of the holes in the cavern ceiling and arced straight into the queen’s head.

With a deafening crack of thunder, the cavern filled with blinding light.

When it cleared, the body of the queen rockworm lay unmoving in a smoking heap. Thor pried Stormbreaker out of the roof of the creature’s mouth and climbed out from between her jaws.

“Well, that was fun,” he said, still grinning, and shook the blood off Stormbreaker’s blade. He walked over to where everyone else was beginning to regroup, helping each other off the ground and nursing wounds. Mantis was awake and on her feet, albeit leaning against Drax and pressing one hand to her head.

“Are you alright, Mantis?” Thor asked her.

“I am fine,” she said faintly, but she was staring at him with a strange wide-eyed look.

A moment later, Thor realized that they were _all_ staring at him strangely. He frowned.

“What?”

Quill pressed a button on the side of his helmet, and the front of it parted to show his face. He looked, Thor was startled to see, rather stricken.

“Thor,” he said. “Your… your arm…”

Thor looked down.

There was a large puncture wound on his right bicep. He hadn’t felt it, before, too full of the rush of battle to feel any pain or fear at all. It was bleeding profusely, crimson streams running all the way down to his wrist and dripping down to the floor. But that, surely, was not the part that had them all so concerned.

A blackness was spreading rapidly through his veins, starting from all around the puncture wound and running all the way up his arm and beneath his armor. It was likely already nearing his heart. The wound itself was smoking faintly with a chemical burning smell.

“Ah,” Thor said, too stunned to think of anything else to say. “Must have been one of the fangs.”

He looked back up at the Guardians, who seemed frozen in place. A beat passed, and then Rocket burst into movement, coming towards Thor and saying, “We’ve gotta get him to a medic, _now_.”

“Don’t worry, rabbit,” Thor said, still feeling numb. “It doesn’t even hurt.”

And then, as if he had summoned it, the pain flooded him all at once. It was a fiery acidic pain, liquid Muspelheim racing into his heart. It was shocking, blinding, like nothing Thor had ever felt before. Worse than the bite of a bilgesnipe. Worse than a knife in his side. Worse than the burn of the Power Stone pushed with unrelenting force into his skull.

Thor sucked in a breath to scream, but darkness took him before he could do even that.

…

_“Mama,” Thor said. “Why are you crying?”_

_Frigga looked up suddenly from the letter she was reading to see him in the doorway, and Loki next to him, the both of them shaken and scared at the sight of their mother in pain._

_“My boys,” she said, her voice thick with tears. She set the letter down on her desk and turned in her chair to face them fully, opening her arms. “Come here.”_

_Thor ran to her then, Loki right on his heels, and they clambered up into their mother’s lap. Thor rested his head on her shoulder and pressed his face to her neck. Her skin smelled like flowers._

_“Do you remember my brother, your Uncle Frey?” she asked._

_Thor nodded. They didn’t see him very often; he lived on Vanaheim, where mother had grown up. But Thor liked Uncle Frey. He had hair that was blonde like Thor’s and he always gave him and Loki little toys carved out of wood._

_Frigga’s hands came up to stroke through his and Loki’s hair. One fair, one dark._

_“I received word today that he fell in battle and passed away,” she said. Her voice wavered, and then broke. More tears rolled down her cheeks._

_Loki shifted so that he could reach up and wipe some of the tears away. “It’s okay, Mama,” he said. “Don’t cry.”_

_Frigga gave a watery laugh and pressed a kiss to the crown of Loki’s head, then another to his forehead. “Thank you, my little one.”_

_Thor frowned. “Uncle Frey died?” he said._

_“I’m afraid so, my love,” his mother said softly._

_“Does that mean we won’t get to see him anymore?”_

_Frigga shifted so that she could look at them. “Not in this life, no,” she said._

_Thor tilted his head. “_ This _life?” he repeated._

_“Those who fall in battle, with weapon in hand, shall go to Valhalla,” Loki said, in such a way that Thor knew he was reciting something he had read in a book somewhere, “Where the brave shall live forever.”_

_“That’s right, darling,” their mother said, and Loki smiled, looking proud of himself._

_“Oh,” Thor said. Well of course he had heard of Valhalla, but he had always just thought the eternal feasting hall was just on another planet or something, not another life. “So… we’ll see him when we die?”_

_Frigga hugged the both of them, so tightly that Thor couldn’t help but squirm after a few moments. “Yes,” she said. “But that won’t be for a long, long time.”_

_“Of course, Mama,” Loki said. “Thor always says we’re gonna live forever.”_

_“I hope so,” she replied. “Come, my boys, will you pray with me?”_

_Thor bit his lip, uncertain. “I don’t know the funeral prayer,” he said._

_“That’s alright,” Frigga replied. “I’ll teach it to you.”_

_She stood, carried them both over to one of the floor length windows that faced the setting sun, and set them down._

_“We kneel facing the west,” she said, and did so, her skirts pooling around her. On either side of her, Loki and Thor did the same._

_“Now, repeat after me,” she said, and line by line, they did so, watching as the sun sank into the waters at the edge of the world._

_"Lo, there do I see my father_

_And lo, there do I see my mother_

_And lo, there do I see my brothers and my sisters_

_And lo, there do I see the line of my people back to the beginning_

_And lo, do they call to me._

_Frey, I bid you take your place in the halls of Valhalla_

_Where the brave shall live forever._

_Nor shall we mourn but rejoice-"_

_…_

“... for those who have died the glorious death,” Thor woke with the words on his lips.

His eyes opened, but they took a moment to adjust to the dim light, and before he could see anything, his other senses were filled.

He could hear the distant and muffled sounds of singing and raucous laughter, of the low hum of hundreds of voices speaking all at once. The sounds of a great feast. He could smell sweet grass, and smoke, and the warm scent of wood that had spent all day baking in the sun. The smell of summer. He could feel soft fabric on his skin, not the armor of a warrior but the ceremonial garb of a prince. He could taste fresh air, fresher than the damp metallic air within the mountains of Xandar, than the recycled oxygen inside the Guardian’s ship, than the fish and sea salt spray that filled the air of New Asgard.

Then his eyes adjusted to the light coming from the stars above, thousands of strange and unfamiliar constellations sparkling like jewels spilled across dark velvet. In front of him, a grand set of stairs led up to a huge building, built entirely of wood with an enormous domed roof like the underside of a ship. Behind its great doors came the sounds of the feast. On either side of the doors, braziers burned with crackling fire. And in front of the doors stood a familiar figure, dark-skinned and clad in gold.

Heimdall watched him with an unreadable expression as Thor slowly made his way up the stairs, stopping just a few steps below him. Muffled song swelled up in the silence between them.

“Heimdall,” Thor said.

“Thor,” Heimdall replied.

There was a pause.

“So this is Valhalla, is it?” Thor said. 

“Indeed,” Heimdall replied, still solemn as ever.

Thor felt the edges of his mouth twitch up. “So even in death, they made you be the Gatekeeper?” 

Finally, finally, a smile spread slowly across Heimdall’s face. “Someone has to keep the riff-raff out,” he said.

Thor laughed, then, and Heimdall’s arms opened as Thor bounded up the last few steps and embraced him tightly.

“It is so good to see you, my friend,” Thor said.

“Ah, Thor,” Heimdall rumbled. “You were not supposed to be here so soon.”

Thor released him and pulled away, shaking his head. “Neither were you,” he said. “And I am glad to be here, truly. Living has tired me. I am ready to rest.”

Heimdall hesitated, an uncertain look on his face. Thor frowned.

“What?” he asked.

“You are not, actually,” Heimdall said. “Ready to rest.”

Thor just blinked at him. “What do you mean?”

“Whatever has happened to you, Thor, you are very close to death, but you have not entirely passed over,” Heimdall explained. “Your body is still fighting, perhaps being kept alive by whoever you were with. Still, you waver on the cusp. These doors will not open to you until you have chosen to give up.”

Thor clenched his jaw and looked away. Out in the distance, he could see the jagged shapes of mountains making black cutouts against the stars. “Give up,” he repeated. “You make it sound like failure. Did I not fall bravely in battle, Heimdall? Is that not a fitting end for one such as I? I have little to return to, now.”

A faint sadness settled in the corners of Heimdall’s eyes. “Do you truly believe so, Thor?”

Thor thought, briefly, of New Asgard, of Valkyrie and Korg and Miek and Gerda’s newborn daughter she’d named Thora; he thought of Clint and Bruce and Steve and of Stark’s wife and daughter; he thought of the Guardians, that strange ragtag group that had saved him from the void of space years ago, and kept saving him from the void of his own despair, who were even now watching him slip away.

But then a great roar of laughter came filtering through Valhalla’s great doors, and Thor remembered the lost might of Asgard, its golden sun, remembered what it was to live on a planet where each face was familiar, what it felt to have a home. His heart ached with sudden and fierce longing; everything in him wished to race up those last few stairs and push those doors open with his own hands.

“Yes,” he said. “I am weary, Heimdall. And I should like to see my old friends and my family again.”

Heimdall gave him a long, searching look. “Very well,” he said finally, and turned to ascend the final stairs.

Thor followed, his heart — and how strange to still have a heart, even in death — picking up in a combination of joy, anticipation, and sudden nervousness.

“Tell me, does Volstagg still best all others in contests of appetite?” he asked.

Heimdall chuckled. “He does.”

“I’m sure he enjoys the best of the eternal feast more than anyone,” Thor went on. “And Fandral, is he still besotted by every woman who smiles at him?”

“Indeed,” Heimdall answered, “And rejected by half as many.”

“Not a bad percentage, all things considered,” Thor laughed. “And Loki,” he added, his heart in his throat, “Surely Loki has pulled off some spectacular pranks by now, has he not?”

They had come now to the top of the stairs, and the sounds from within the hall were clearer than ever. Thor was so filled with giddy joy that it took him a moment to realize that Heimdall had not answered. When he looked over, the Gatekeeper’s expression was one of confused concern. Thor’s heart skipped a beat.

“What?” he said.

“Loki is not here,” Heimdall replied.

The breath fled Thor’s lungs all at once and the sounds of the great hall subsided into a faint ringing. Stunned, he could only say once more, “What?”

“I did not know that he had died,” Heimdall said.

“Mere minutes after you did,” Thor said with numb lips. “Thanos killed him too.”

Heimdall frowned. “And you saw this with your own eyes?”

“Yes,” Thor said, feeling dizzy. As if he could ever forget. Where else could Loki be? Surely not in Niflheim, among the dishonored dead — Loki had made many mistakes, yes, but in the end… “He has to be here,” Thor went on. “He died as bravely as anyone.”

“Your brother would not go unnoticed here,” Heimdall said. “Trust me, Thor. You will not find him in there.”

“But where else could he be?” Thor asked, unable to stifle the note of desperation in his voice.

“Perhaps…” Heimdall began, then hesitated. Then he began again. “I have heard that the Jotuns believe that after they die, their souls are carried to an endless world of pristine snow, where they may hunt and fish and run forever, without a care for war or hardship-”

“No,” Thor interrupted. “No, Loki is one of us, through and through, no matter the nature of his blood. He belongs with _us,_ with his _family_.”

It was too horrible a thought to ponder, Loki forever stranded in a plain of ice and snow, surrounded only by a people he did not know. It simply couldn’t be.

“Or perhaps…” Heimdall went on, “Perhaps your eyes deceived you — or he did — and Loki yet lives.”

The thought filled him with a painful, horrific hope, a hope that he had not ever dared entertain for more than a few weak moments. His heart was going very fast.

“Can you see him?” Thor asked, foolishly, unsurprised when Heimdall shook his head.

“Even my eyes cannot look past the veil of death,” he said. “Only the living can find the living.”

Thor looked back at the doors of Valhalla, towering over him, all that stood between him and the many reunions he had oft dreamed of in recent years. His friends were on the other side. His mother. His father. A sinking certainty settled in his gut.

“Then I suppose,” he said, “That I shall have to remain among the living.”

There was a pause, and then Heimdall said, “You are sure?”

Thor turned away from the doors and faced him. “I cannot rest,” he said, “Without knowing what has happened to my brother.”

Heimdall nodded. “I understand.” He put out his hand.

Thor took it, then pulled him into another hug.

“Thank you, my friend,” he said quietly. “When next we meet, I promise you, we will walk through those doors together.”

“Not too soon, Thor,” Heimdall said, and released him. His features were solemn but his eyes were shining. “Now go, before your body fails entirely.”

Thor smiled, and turned his back on Valhalla, swiftly making his way back down the stairs. As he reached the bottom, he heard the creaking and rumbling of wood as the doors opened. The full force of joyous sound poured out into the sweet-smelling night, carrying with it the intoxicating scent of roasting meat and fresh-brewed ale. A rectangle of bright, golden light spilled down the stairs and onto the grass; Thor could see his own shadow standing stark against it. He did not look back.

_Loki,_ he thought. _Loki, wherever you are, I will find you. Whether you live, or whether you wander in the mists of Niflheim, or whether you trudge through the snows of the Jotun paradise, I will find you. I will bring you home._

He closed his eyes and then, when the sensations of the eternal realm had faded, he opened them.


	4. Chapter 4

Thor’s first breath was like fire in his lungs. He sat bolt upright, taking in great gasps and clutching at his chest, where he could feel the venom burning away in his blood. The blinding pain faded away after a few moments, and Thor registered that he was on his cot in the _Benatar_ , and all the Guardians were gathered around him, watching with frozen looks of shock. Quill had an empty syringe dangling from his hand.

“This feels familiar,” Thor muttered, forcibly reminded of their first meeting and wondering if he was going to make a habit of making miraculous recoveries on this ship.

“Oh my god,” Quill said. “Thor. Are you okay?”

“That is a very stupid question,” Drax interjected, and Quill glared at him.

Thor coughed, trying to clear the last of the pain from his chest with little success. He waved off Quill’s concern and made to get up. Six pairs of hands simultaneously prevented him from doing so.

“You’re not going anywhere, buddy, take it easy,” Rocket said.

“You’re lucky that antidote Dey gave us actually worked,” Nebula said. “Your chances were abysmal.”

“I am Groot,” Groot said, and Thor heard, _We thought you were dead._

“I _was_ dead,” Thor said. “Or nearly so. I saw the gates of Valhalla, near enough to touch.” He moved to get up again. This time, the Guardians let him sit up, but stopped him from getting out of the bed.

Mantis’ head titled like a bird’s. “What is Valhalla?”

“My people believe it is the afterlife for all the bravely fallen,” Thor explained, letting his eyes drift shut and trying to will away the pain that still prickled throughout his body. His heart felt bruised where it beat against his ribs. “I saw an old friend there.”

He opened his eyes and saw Rocket and Quill exchange doubtful looks, but ignored them. The thought of what Heimdall had told him — _perhaps Loki yet lives_ — filled him with new strength, and finally he surged to his feet, pushed his way through the wall the Guardians had formed around his bed, and made for the bridge.

“Thor, wait,” Quill called after him, but Thor paid him no mind. The others followed him from belowdecks as he headed straight for the navigation system. “What are you doing?”

“Making course for Nornheim,” Thor said. If anyone would know, if anyone would know for sure-

Quill’s hand on his shoulder wrenched him away and Thor hastily repressed the instinctual urge to punch him in the face. Surely such a blow would prove fatal to a fragile Midgardian.

“No you’re _not,_ ” Quill said. “Not least because you just woke up from a near-death coma and aren’t making sense! What’s Nornheim?”

“The homeworld of the Norns,” Thor said.

“Alright, and who are the Norns? What do they have to do with anything?”

Thor took a deep and frustrated breath. He didn’t have _time_ for this-

_You spent five years sitting around, doing nothing to find him,_ a faintly snide voice inside reminded him. _What’s another hour?_

“Thor, maybe you should sit down,” Mantis suggested gently, gesturing towards the big table in the middle of the room.

Thor took another steadying breath. It would do no good, he reminded himself, to go running recklessly off without a plan, without an explanation. Hadn’t Loki always told him that was one of his most glaring flaws?

_Just one of your many faults, brother,_ he would drawl, and smirk when Thor would throw something at him.

He’d been right, though, was the thing. And so, feeling suddenly exhausted, Thor obliged Mantis and seated himself at the table.

“I saw Valhalla,” he said again, explaining as patiently as he could, “And Loki was not there. And if he was not there, then he must either be living, or in another afterlife altogether. And if anyone knows whether he is alive, it will be the three Norns, who weave the life-threads of every being.”

There was a very long silence.

“Okay, not sure where to start here,” Quill finally began-

“That is impossible,” Drax interrupted. “Three people could never weave so many threads.”

Thor’s jaw clenched, unclenched. “It is only a symbol, Drax,” he said. “Forgive me, I know that is beyond your understanding. In fact, whatever the Norns truly are, they are beyond any mortal being’s understanding. What we may see of them — their forms, their weavings, their watering of Yggdrasill’s roots — is only our attempt at comprehending a power that is beyond us.”

“And you think they would know whether your brother is alive?” Nebula asked. “And that they would tell you?”

“The Norns know all,” Thor said. “And they have been known to grant wisdom to those who can find them, from time to time. My own father would sometimes brave the wilds of Nornheim to seek their counsel, in times of dire need.”

Quill frowned. “They know… everything?”

“Alright, hold on, back up,” Rocket broke in. “I’m not buying this. Even if these mystical beings or whatever could somehow know all this, you really want to set out on this crazy quest because of a hallucinatory dream your brain cooked up at the edge of death?”

“It wasn’t a dream,” Thor snapped.

Rocket raised a furry white brow. “You really think after death we’re all gonna go to some big Viking ship in the sky? Buddy, more likely it was the last sparking neurons in your brain showing you what you wanted to see.”

Lightning flickered across his knuckles, danced through his hair. “Valhalla is a feasting hall, not a ship, and yes, I do think so,” he growled through gritted teeth. “Do not dare to mock my people’s most sacred beliefs, rabbit.”

There was a tense pause, but then Rocket sighed, relenting.

“Thor,” he said, his voice uncharacteristically gentle, “I’m only trying to say- well, I mean, it’s no secret you’re not at your best, and haven’t been for a while. You’re grieving. You’re traumatized. Hell, you relapsed back into drinking yesterday. Don’t you think maybe… this is just the most recent manifestation of that?”

Rocket’s gaze was steady and earnest, but all the others had suddenly found the floor, the ceiling, or the view out the ship’s windows to be suddenly very interesting. Thor’s face burned, ashamed of their pity, irrationally betrayed that Rocket would just say outright what everyone knew and pretended they didn’t.

“You may be right,” Thor allowed quietly, barely willing to do that much. “But if you are not… well, I am not willing to risk it.”

There was another silence, and just as Quill was taking in a breath to say something, a sudden and insistent beeping broke the quiet.

“Match found,” the cheery voice of the computer system said brightly. “Match found. Match found. Match found.”

Thor turned round slowly, hardly daring to hope, hardly daring to breathe. Could it be, could it be-

The surveillance scanner system was in full display mode, and on the screen was Gamora.

Her face was partially turned away, and her hair was cut short and dyed a dark blue. It was apparent that she was trying to stay under the radar, but in profile, her face was clearly recognizable. Her expression was distracted, worried; she was in motion, and appeared to be looking over her shoulder.

In a few quick steps Quill strode over to the monitor, his gaze never leaving the picture of Gamora except to read the information on the right half of the screen.

“Galador,” he said. “She’s on Galador.”

He stood there for another moment, transfixed, before breaking into motion again. With a few movements of his hand he brought up the navigation system and began entering coordinates.

The bitter disappointment in Thor’s stomach curdled swiftly into something hotter, and he stood abruptly from his chair.

“I see,” he said coldly. “So when I want to embark on a quest based in foolish hope, I am being rash. But when you want to do the same, we are all at the mercy of your whims?”

Quill whirled around. “It isn’t foolish!” He pointed at the screen. “Unlike you, I actually have proof that she’s alive!”

“Quill,” Drax spoke up, “We must all agree before we set out on a mission, you made that rule yourself-”

“What do you expect to happen when you find her?” Thor said. “You think she will fall into your arms like a lovestruck maiden? She doesn’t even know you!”

“She’s meant to be with us!” Quill shouted back. “She’s part of this crew and we won’t abandon her!”

“I think both of you should calm down,” Mantis suggested, edging slowly towards them.

Thor ignored her. “Then you should understand,” he said to Quill, “how I cannot abandon my kin either!”

“Your brother is _dead,_ ” Quill hissed. “Why don’t you just accept that, already?”

Thor growled, “And why don’t _you_ accept that the Gamora who knew and loved you is dead, too?”

Quill’s face twisted. “I don’t care what you think,” he spat. “Hate to remind you, buddy, but _I’m_ the captain of this ship, _not_ you!”

Thor’s fists clenched, and he took a step towards Quill. “I could be,” he said, not bothering to mask the threat.

Quill’s hand went for his blaster, and for one blind furious moment, Thor was ready to fight him, to wrench the proverbial wheel of this ship from his hands. Thor was taller, larger, infinitely more powerful, it would take almost no effort at all-

Suddenly there was a blade mere inches from Thor’s nose, suspended between he and Quill’s faces. Thor blinked, and looked down the length of the blade to see Nebula, glaring at them both.

“Both of you, back off,” she said harshly. “The last thing we need right now is a mutiny.”

Thor looked around to see the rest of the Guardians standing with their hands on their weapons, Mantis frozen in place a pace away with one hand reached out towards each of them.

For a moment, no one moved. Nebula twisted her blade meaningfully, its sharp edges facing he and Quill rather than the flat of it. They each took a step backwards.

“I apologize,” Thor said stiffly.

“Yeah. Sorry,” Quill managed, looking away.

Nebula lowered her blade, but did not sheathe it.

“Galador is not far,” she said. “There is no reason we cannot go there on the way to Nornheim. If you idiots would ever stop and think for a moment you would realize that.”

Thor bit his tongue against an angry retort and forced himself to calm down.

“Okay,” Quill said after a moment. “Alright, yeah, that sounds fair.” He cleared his throat and lifted his chin, clearly trying to regain a captain’s demeanor. “Is everyone cool with that?”

The rest of the Guardians murmured agreement, then all turned to Thor.

A beat of silence stretched long and tense, then Thor let his shoulders slump. “I suppose,” he said finally.

“Glad we’re agreed,” Rocket said. “Now Thor, go and lay your ass back down. You still look like shit.”

Thor’s anger and frustration were still rumbling storm-like in the pit of his stomach and he did not appreciate being treated like a child, but he figured he had caused enough of a commotion today. Swallowing his pride, he stalked back down to his quarters, shut the door, lay down on the cot, and threw an arm over his eyes. He doubted that sleep would come anytime soon.

…

Galador was about a day’s travel from the closest jump point, and the ship systems were entering the night cycle when they left Xandar. Quill switched on autopilot, and he and the rest of the Guardians went to their bunks to try and rest for a few hours.

Thor feigned sleep when Rocket and Groot came into their shared room, and waited until their breathing went deep and even before standing silently and slipping out the door.

Up on the bridge, he placed some supplies next to Stormbreaker into the escape pod and programmed a course for Nornheim into the pod’s navigation system.

It felt cowardly, slipping away in the night, alone, but Thor knew how this ill-fated journey of Quill’s was going to go. There was a high possibility that Gamora would be gone from Galador by the time they arrived, and even if she wasn’t, she would not come along with the Guardians easily. This Gamora was plucked fresh from a universe where she still worked for Thanos, in name at least if not in her heart, and she surely knew nothing of love and friendship. She had lost her father, her sister, the entire Black Order that was all she’d ever known. She must be floundering now, and lost. She would run, and Quill would want to follow her.

Thor could, perhaps, convince the Guardians to split up, but despite all they had gone through together in the past few months- the past few years, in Rocket’s case- they had loved Gamora before him, and more than him. Likely none of them would choose to accompany him, anyway, and it would be a waste of time for him to wait around for all this to come to pass. Better to leave now. Easier. More painless, for him at least, for even if the Guardians cared little for him, even if they were often at odds, he could not deny that they made him smile when not much else could, these days.

Thor stooped over the main table, pen and paper in hand. _Sorry for taking your pod again,_ he wrote. _I’ll return it when I can._ He paused, considering. There was more he could say. More he should say, perhaps, for it seemed cruel to depart like this as if their time together meant nothing to him. But of course, he had never had much of a way with words. _Thank you for your friendship,_ he scrawled. _And good luck to you all._

Five minutes later, he was gone.

…

It took two days to get to Nornheim. Thor landed in the middle of the planet’s night, on a plain that stretched between a mountain range and a huge, dark forest.

Nornheim was a fertile and wild planet, full of life but inhospitable to outsiders. In its waters lurked sea serpents and hungry sharp-toothed fish; in its forests wandered squirrels the size of deer, stags the size of bilgesnipe, bilgesnipe the size of trees; in its mountains storm giants raged against the heavens and trolls burrowed deep into the rock. Any army that tried to tame this planet fell short against its native fury. Thor himself had tried a spot of adventure here with the Warriors Three and Sif and Loki, long ago when he was young and at his most foolish. They’d enraged the rock trolls, who were as big as frost giants and much less inclined towards diplomacy, and only managed to escape when Loki summoned a great cloud of mist to hide them. They had never, Thor realized, actually thanked him for that.

The memory of it made Thor ache. Unable to stop himself, he tilted his head back and looked up at the stars, able to pick out within a moment the tiny pinprick of light that was Asgard. Nornheim was several light years down on the World Tree; though Asgard was no more, the light of its fiery death had not yet reached this planet, and so it would shine on, at least for a little longer. Here, he could gaze into the past, knowing that the Asgard he was looking at was alive and well.

Thor tore his eyes away. There was no use dwelling on that, now. Better to focus on the things he might yet be able to save.

Thor strode forth into the woods. Though he did not know the way to the place he was seeking, he knew that all true seekers found their way to the Well eventually. Or rather, the Well found them.

After a few hours of fighting his way through thick vegetation, standing still and silent as great beasts passed by, and swinging Stormbreaker threateningly at anything that wandered too close, Thor finally broke into a clearing. In the center, a huge ash tree stretched its many branches up towards the sky, and at its roots, a still pool of water gleamed in the breaking dawn light.

Thor approached the water cautiously and peered through the surface. The Well of Urd was clear, but so deep that Thor could see no bottom. He knelt, and when he dipped his hands into the water it was very cold. Cupping his hands, he brought the water to his mouth, and drank.

When he lowered his hands again, three figures stood before him, amid the roots of the tree: an elderly woman who was hunched over facing to Thor’s left, a little girl who faced to his right, and a maiden who looked to be around Thor’s age, straight-backed and strong-jawed, who looked directly at him.

“Thor, son of Odin,” said the maiden.

“God of Thunder,” said the crone.

“King of Asgard,” said the child.

Thor bowed his head. “King no longer, I’m afraid,” he said.

“Asgard has never had an abdication,” said the crone.

“Only death or sleep or exile,” said the maiden.

“The once and future king,” said the child.

Thor swallowed. “Be that as it may,” he said, “Asgard is no more. And what remains has no need of a king such as I.”

The maiden smiled knowingly. “Ah, but what of destiny, son of Odin?”

“God of Thunder,” said the crone.

“King of Asgard,” said the child.

“I did not come to debate my titles,” Thor said. “And it is not my destiny which I seek to know.”

“Just as well,” said the crone. 

“We would not tell you your own fate,” said the child.

“But we can answer that which you would ask,” said the maiden. “For a price, of course.”

“Ah.” Thor’s stomach sank. “Of course.” He took in a breath. “What would you ask of me? I have little left to give.”

“Your father gave an eye,” said the crone. 

“Some have given hands,” said the child.

“Or arms,” said the crone. 

“Sometimes memories,” said the child.

“And sometimes hearts,” said the maiden. Her gaze upon Thor was piercing.

Thor’s own heart was going fast. He focused on keeping his breathing steady. “Take what you wish from me, then,” he said.

“So brave,” sighed the child.

“So desperate,” muttered the crone.

“Very well, then,” said the maiden. “A lock of your hair.”

Thor blinked up at her. “My hair? That’s all?”

“Most come here to ask after their futures,” the maiden said. “They wish to know when they will die. They wish to know how their wars will end.”

“They wish to learn magecraft, and warcraft,” said the crone. “They wish to strike their enemies down.”

“They wish for wisdom, they wish for love,” said the child. “They wish to see the workings of the universe.”

“By comparison, you wish for nothing,” the maiden said. “And our prices are always fair. A lock of your hair, son of Odin; your hair, the color of sunshine.”

Relief and gratitude washed over Thor. Pulling a knife from his boot, he slashed off one of his smaller braids. He held it in his palm and outstretched it across the well, towards the maiden. She gestured at the water, and he turned his hand over and let the braid drop. It sank as swiftly as a stone, a yellow flash in the morning light soon swallowed by deep blue darkness.

“Now,” the maiden said, “You may ask.”

Barely able to hear himself over his racing heart, Thor said, “Is Loki alive?”

Between one blink and the next, a tapestry appeared in the ash tree. It was huge, and so long that it was draped multiple times over every branch of the tree, wrapped around and around the trunk, and looped through its protruding roots.The threads were of every color, and very fine and fragile; there must have been billions of them, all woven together, and being woven still — the hands of the women were busy at work, though they never once glanced down.

“The daughter of Odin dealt a great blow to Asgard,” the maiden said.

“And the one called Thanos did even greater damage,” said the crone, running a finger over where half of the threads had been shorn off. “Many did die.”

“Still others are being born,” said the child, adding a new thread into her weaving.

“But some refuse to play by the rules,” said the maiden, and held up a single thread: dark green, with a knot tied in the middle, as if someone had cut it then hastily changed their mind.

“Loki, son of Odin-

“Son of Laufey-”

“Son of Frigga-”

“Is alive,” the maiden finished. “Still and again.”

Joy broke over Thor then, heady joy and relief that made his sight blurry and his legs weak; were he not already on his knees, he would have fallen to them.

“Truly?” he said, not caring that his voice wavered.

The maiden smiled at him, looking amused. “Truly,” she said.

Thor surged to his feet, suddenly invigorated. “Where is he?” he asked, eagerly.

“Ah ah,” said the child. “Now that is another question entirely.”

“Another lock of hair, then,” Thor said, reaching once more for the knife.

“No,” the maiden said simply, holding up a hand. “We allowed you one question. We have answered it. We are not street fortune tellers, to hand out predictions for any piece of coin.”

“Perhaps one day you may ask another,” said the crone, “Should the Well allow you to find it again.”

“Wait,” Thor said, taking a step forward, though they had made no motion to leave. “He could be anywhere in the universe by now. How am I supposed to find him?”

“That is your journey to make,” said the child. “Though of course, we know how it will end.” She looped a red thread around her finger, pulled it taut, and ran a fingernail down its length. Thor felt a tingle like hands tracing his spine.

“Good luck to you, son of Odin,” said the maiden.

“God of Thunder,” said the crone.

“King of Asgard,” said the child.

And within the next breath, the Well, the tree, and the Norns were gone.

…

It took Thor another few hours to find his way out of the forest again. By the time he did, he was filthy and exhausted and hungry; his body was sore, still slow to heal after his near-death mere days ago. And he felt better than he had in years.

He could breathe again. He could walk with light steps. He could hum a song for no other reason than because he liked the sound of it. His brother was alive. He’d lost nearly everything, but Loki was alive.

Of course, that cold darkness coiled up like a serpent inside him still whispered in his head, _alive, but for how much longer? Anything could be happening to him. Alive, but then why hasn’t he come back? Perhaps he’s decided he’s better off without you. You, selfish you, you throw away your titles and your kingdom but cling so desperately to him. Pathetic, even if you find him he will surely betray you again-_

But Thor did not care about any of that, just now. He climbed back into the pod and set a course for the coordinates where _The Statesman_ had made its last stand. Loki would not be there, likely, but perhaps there would be something- some sign of what happened to him- and if there wasn’t, well… Thor would deal with that when it came.

The sun was high in Nornheim’s sky, and Thor could not bring himself to care about whatever troubles might come.

That was his way. He rarely worried, even when he should have.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (I remembered halfway through this that Thor kind of technically had an encounter with the Norns in Age of Ultron and it was nothing like this but who cares, right?)
> 
> Next up: a POV change. Stick around to find out who 👀


	5. Interlude

_ Five and a half years ago _

The Ravager ship drifted slowly through the carnage. Like debris lost at sea, the remains of the attacked ship floated aimlessly through the vacuum of space: bits of metal, odd objects, and lots and lots of bodies.

Inside the ship, the Ravagers hummed with excitement; where others might see horror, they saw opportunity: scrap metal, treasures, meat. Money in the making. They’d intercepted the distress call from the vessel and purposefully waited a few hours before following the signal. Their gamble had paid off; whoever had attacked the poor bastards had run off, and left behind a veritable gold mine. An Asgardian wreck meant fine clothes, well-crafted weapons, maybe some jewels and gold tucked into the hidden folds of the wealthy women’s clothing.

One of the Ravagers equipped a space suit and went in and out of the airlock, dragging metal and bodies with him each time. They piled up in the cargo hold and then, when that filled up, in the main deck. Soon the ship filled with the smell of blood and death, but the Ravagers were so used to that particular smell that they hardly even noticed.

“Here’s the last of ‘em,” the one on scavenge duty said, hauling a corpse onto the deck and dumping it down on its back. “Looks pretty intact, too. Probably died from the broken neck, I’d guess.”

“Must’ve been high class,” the captain Ravager said, nudging the corpse with his foot. “Look at that cape; that’s quality fabric. Might keep it for myself.” He bent down and ripped the cape from the corpse’s shoulders, then draped it around his own. He leered at his first mate. “Nice color, too. Goes with my eyes, don’tcha think?”

“Nothing goes with your eyes, boss, they’re yellow as piss,” the first mate said, and knelt down to search the body for more treasures. 

He found a knife in each boot, several more in the belt, and two tiny ones, each only as large as a finger, strapped to the corpse’s forearms. 

“Paranoid, much?” the first mate muttered.

“Looks like he had a reason to be,” said the fourth and final Ravager, coming up on the deck. “These poor bastards never stood a chance, most of ‘em weren’t even armed. We’ll make a killing on the meat market, though, boss.”

“That’s for damn sure. I’ll make course for Gorre-13,” the captain said, and sauntered over to the navigation, the dark green cape swishing, he thought, quite satisfactorily around his ankles.

The first mate removed the corpse’s knives, then its vambraces, which looked to be made of strong, well-oiled leather. As he did so, a strange marking on the corpse’s palm caught his eye. He frowned, lifting the hand closer to his face.

“What’s this mean, d’ya think?” he asked the scavenger. “Recognize that language?”

The scavenger leaned in. The marking was circular and perfectly centered in the corpse’s palm. It looked to have been carved into the skin, the lines as pale as scars. Within the circle, dozens of hair-fine lines twisted about each other in a pattern that was clearly intentional and highly intricate.

“Dunno,” the scavenger said. “But you know I can’t read.”

At that moment, the ship drifted so that the windows in the main deck faced the closest star in this system. It was a mid-sized star with several planets, none inhabited, but it bore a striking resemblance to the star that Terra orbited, and the one that Asgard had once spun around. Big and warm, it suddenly filled the deck with bright yellow light, fully illuminating the marking on the corpse’s hand.

The marking began to glow.

Then the whole corpse began to glow.

The first mate dropped the corpse’s hand as if it were burning as well as glowing and stood, backpedaling away, mouth agape. The scavenger, too, tripped over himself trying to back off.

There was a cracking sound, very much like that of a broken bone realigning.

“What the f-”

The first mate was cut off by a knife in his throat. A knife that had, until approximately half a second ago, been concealed in a hidden sheath that the first mate had missed, on the thigh of the corpse that was quite suddenly no longer a corpse.

The scavenger looked down at the first mate, gurgling his dying breath on the floor, and screamed.

Not for long, though.

By the time the scavenger hit the floor, the captain and the last crew member had had the presence of mind to take out their blasters and point them at the not-corpse, who paused to take a few deep, ragged breaths, knife in hand, splattered in blood, his eyes wild.

“What are you?” the captain barked, his voice harsh but the hands on his blaster trembling ever so slightly.

The not-corpse glared at him, and moved.

He threw the knife, which wedged itself deep inside the crew member’s eye, and dove at the captain, just barely dodging the blast the captain shot at him. Quick as a snake striking he grabbed the captain’s arm and twisted it, his strength a thousand times what it should be from the look of him. He caught the blaster as it dropped from the captain’s hands and then shot him with it, point-blank, in the face.

 For a few moments, all was still. Then Loki knelt, took the cape from the captain’s body, and swung it back over his own shoulders.

The adrenaline went out of him all at once, and he put out a hand to brace himself against the wall, slumping and dragging in deep, painful breaths. Never had recycled oxygen tasted sweeter. He held out his other hand, inspecting the marking there; it had stopped glowing, but neither did it look any longer like a scar — instead, it was black, the same color of necrotic tissue. 

Loki stared, recalling all at once the day he had carved the symbol into his palm: not long after Svartalfheim, when his near-death had filled him with a frantic and childish fear of his own mortality. Locked in the All-Father’s chambers, with the All-Father’s private books that he’d always kept Loki from reading, he’d found an old tale. 

A man tricked death in a game of wits and bargained for a resurrection. “Just once,” said death, “I will turn away from you.” The man shook death’s hand and the symbol was burned into his palm. That evening, the man was attacked on the road home. Three robbers slit his throat and ran off with his money. All through the night, his body lay cold along the roadside in a field of tall grass. In the morning, the sunlight fell upon him, and the wound in his throat closed, and he lived again. 

Whether it was truth or folk tale, Loki didn’t know, but the symbol was there on the page, and Loki was caught up in thoughts of a blade through his chest and his mother’s life cut short in an instant and the threat of Thanos still out there in the Void, and he’d carved the rune into his own palm, heedless of the price. For there was always a price; any mage worth his spellbook knew that.

Now, Loki thought he knew what that price was. Upon first waking, he’d tried to summon a dagger from nothing, and failed. He tried it again now; still, nothing happened. His open hand trembled as he tried to conjure a flame, a witchlight, a flower in bloom — nothing, nothing, nothing, not even a whisper of magic. Gone. It was all gone.

The world narrowed to a pinprick of light as panic overtook him. No magic. Who was he without magic? Loki, greatest sorcerer of all the realms; son of Frigga, raised by witches, who taught him all that he knew; who was he without that? Nothing. Nothing.

His breaths were coming faster now and he could feel himself on the edge of passing out. So he made the abrupt decision to pack all that up — the panic, the fear, the existential crisis — and stow it away to be dealt with later, or maybe, possibly, never. There were, after all, bigger problems at hand.

Loki’s gaze moved to the bodies on the floor. The crew of the ship, the captain, and Asgardians gone blue from the near absolute zero cold of space led in a trail to the staircase that went down to the cargo hold. Loki could smell death coming up from below. He swallowed hard. He would have to go down there. Because he had to know- he had to make sure-

Surely Thor could not be down there. Surely Thanos would have been satisfied with the death of one brother, one prince of Asgard, one half of the remaining House of Odin. Surely he had not, after he let Loki’s body fall lifeless to the ground, then turned on Thor and put a blade through his heart, or crushed his skull in his hand, or put the Gauntlet round his throat just as with Loki and slowly squeezed the life out of him as Thor struggled and cried out and stared at Loki’s still body as all the fight left his own.

Loki closed his eyes. Thor lived, surely. He  _ must  _ live. For if Thor was dead, then Loki’s sacrifice was for nothing — and so was his resurrection.

So Loki went down into the bowels of the ship, cold dread creeping into his lungs with every descending step, and looked over every body. There he saw faces he recognized, and faces he didn’t. He saw Heimdall, and spared a moment to crouch down and close his golden eyes. He saw the last remaining son of Volstagg. He saw the woman who used to sell fruit in the city market in the summers. She’d always saved him the sweetest berries, when he’d sneak out to the market when he was young.

But he didn’t see Thor. So either he lived, or his body was still out there, floating in the darkness. Loki went back to the upper deck, took the helm, and steered through the remains of the wreckage. No Thor. Of course, there was still the possibility that his body had drifted far away in the hours since the attack, or that it had been vaporized entirely when the ship exploded, but Loki allowed himself to hope, and to breathe a little easier. 

But that raised the inevitable question: if Thor wasn’t here, where was he?

Instinctively, Loki tried to reach out with his magic to that thread anchored deep within his spirit that had always connected to Thor’s magic, no matter how far away. It had been unbreakable in their youth, had stretched to gossamer thin while Loki was in Thanos’ possession, and had only just begun to gain strength again. Loki had never told Thor about it, and he doubted Thor ever noticed — his brother had never been sensitive to the subtleties of magic. 

As soon as he tried, though, he slammed once more against that sucking emptiness inside him where his magic had once been. And the loss of that connection hurt almost as much as all the rest combined.

Loki pressed a hand to his forehead and tried to push down the pain and the panic and  _ think.  _ Without magic, he had no way of finding Thor, but surely his brother would continue heading towards Midgard, especially knowing that Thanos would go there, too. Loki would head there as well; he had to be there at Thor’s side when he faced Thanos again. But without his magic, it would be impossible to get there quickly. A glance at the ship controls showed it was not equipped with a hyperdrive. Loki was days away from the nearest jump point, and Midgard was even more days away from that. 

Besides, Loki did not want to travel any further on this cursed ship, this floating grave. 

With a few more taps at the control panel, Loki pulled up the ship’s manifest, and found that there was another, smaller ship docked onto this one. Likely the Ravagers used it for short excursions where they didn’t want to risk the theft or discovery of their cargo. It was larger and faster than an escape pod, but it was also without a hyperdrive. Still, it would suit Loki’s purposes.

Loki went quickly through the ship and took everything that might be useful: weapons, food, armor. He looted the corpses of the Ravagers. He left the Asgardians untouched. Then there was only one thing left to do.

In a storage compartment he found several tanks of spare fuel. He cracked them open and tipped them over, careful not to let the quickly spreading pool touch his boots or the bottom of his cape. As fuel cascaded down the stairs into the cargo hold, Loki disabled the ship’s shields and departed through the airlock into the extra ship. He undocked, then carefully maneuvered the smaller ship to face the larger one.

The weapons system was clearly marked, and Loki’s finger hesitated only a moment over the button to deploy a blast before pressing it. 

One last flaming arrow; one last burning ship. One last funeral to send half of what remained of Asgard forth into the stars. It was a poor excuse for a pyre, and there were no songs to be sung, no feasts to be held, no kings to give witness. But there was, at least, Loki, and the funeral prayer that fell effortlessly from his lips as he watched the laser blast pierce the hull of the ship, ignite the fuel, and set it all ablaze.

He lingered for long moments after the prayer was finished, but there was not much time to mourn. Thor was somewhere out there, surely running recklessly towards another chance at Thanos, and Loki did not want to let him face that alone. He turned the ship around and set the thrusters to full blast, heading towards the nearest jump point as fast as he could.

…

Had Loki not been stripped of his magic, he would have felt it coming. There are some things that ripple the very fabric of the universe, and this did more than ripple — it rent it apart. If Loki had his magic, he would have felt it vibrating in his bones like a great scream spreading across the stars. He could not have stopped it, of course, but he might have known what was happening. 

Only a few hours after leaving the Ravager ship, Loki reached out to press a button on the control panel and saw his hand crumble apart.

It came quickly, for him; he had only a moment to stare in shock before the rest of him dissolved into ash with a sound like a gentle sigh.

There is more to the story of the man who made a deal with death. 

When he awoke in the morning with his slit throat once again whole, he ran, giddy with joy, all the way home. He burst through his front door, intending to tell his beloved of his cleverness and his miraculous return, only to find the very same robbers who had killed him had invaded his house as well — thinking, of course, that he would never return.

They were surprised, but not too surprised to attack. The one who had slit his throat still had the same knife; this time, it found his heart, and this time, he did not wake — not even when the sun rose the next day and his beloved returned to a house stripped bare and his body cold and bloody.

There is a reason the book was locked up in Odin’s private study. To cheat death was to tip the scales of the universe ever so slightly off-kilter; it was to invite misfortune and chaos as the scales tried to right themselves; it was to turn the odds against you. It was, itself, a sort of curse.

But Loki, in his moment of panic and weakness, had not read that story all the way through to the end.

…

Loki would wake again, eventually, as would every other being who had turned to dust in that moment. And when he did, he would not remember:

A world that seemed to be forever drenched in sunset, the endless sky as orange as fire. A vast world, a flat plain covered entirely in a thin layer of water. A world full of people just as lost and forlorn as he.

A world where he never tired, and never longed for food or drink, and never stopped walking. Never stopped searching, for the one face he longed, still, to see. Each of his steps made ripples that spread out before him, all across this strange world.

He looked at every face he passed, and while most only stared blankly back at him, some furrowed in confusion, or even recognition — like the long-haired man who could not stop touching his left arm as if he was surprised to find it there, and the young redheaded woman who moved her hands in strange ways as if trying to conjure something, and the dark-skinned man who held regality in his spine and the tilt of his chin and looked up at the sky as if expecting to see stars there, and the teenage boy who stared back at him openly, mouth agape. Loki did not recognize any of them, but after his invasion on Midgard he knew his face was not one Midgardians would easily forget.

But he never found the one he was looking for.

He stopped, once, to sit beneath the roof of the only structure he ever found in this world. There was a little girl there, with green skin and her dark hair in two childish braids.

“Aren’t you happy you haven’t found him?” she said to him, apropos of nothing. “It means he isn’t trapped here.”

“I am, I suppose,” Loki said. “But still — I am selfish, and I want to see him again.”

“Perhaps you will,” she said. “This was never meant to be a final resting place. It is for transition. For waiting.”

“Waiting for what?” Loki asked.

She looked at him. “Sacrifice,” she said. “There is always another sacrifice.”

Loki shuddered, though he could not say why. Something about the depth of her child eyes, and the resonance in her voice.

“Who are you?” he said.

She smiled. “I am the Soul. I am the sacrifice. And until there is another sacrifice, this is my realm.”

Loki looked out at the horizon, the same in every direction. “It seems a lonely place to rule.”

The child shrugged. “Well, like I said. I’m only waiting. Someday I’ll be freed.”

“I’ve always hated waiting,” Loki admitted.

She smiled again. “Time means nothing here,” she said. “Soul is eternal, after all.”

Loki looked at her, and for a moment he could see not just a little girl, but also a sharp-edged teenager, and a tall and lean young woman, and an older woman who was wrinkled and weakened but with that same depth in her eyes. And she was all of these things, and none of them.

“Besides,” she said, and stood, her gaze out in the distance. Loki looked the same way, and saw the silhouettes of people against the orange sky begin to vanish, one by one, without leaving so much as a ripple in their wake.

“It looks like you won’t have much longer to wait at all.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this is shorter than usual but I wanted to give you guys something to tide you over. Now we know what happened to Loki between Infinity War and Endgame — but as to where he's been since, you'll have to stick around to find out.
> 
> Also did y'all hear?? THOR 4! THOR 4! THOR 4!


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello to everyone who is still out there! I know it's been an age and a half since the last update, but honestly, I am not a planner when it comes to writing, and I felt like I had written myself into a corner, which I could not fix by going back and re-writing previous chapters. However, I am pushing through with this story and, though I don't yet know how I'm going to solve every problem I've created for myself, I have had some ideas and am determined to figure it out in a satisfactory manner. I'll finish this thing if it kills me. Thanks to you guys who have stuck around <3

The universe is vast.

Any sentient creature with a half-developed brain knows that, of course, but it’s impossible to _know_ just how vast. Vast, as a word, doesn’t cut it, and neither does enormous, colossal, limitless, immense, or any other word in a human language. The Ghartunians, a species living on the outskirts of the Messier 82 galaxy that communicates largely through the direct transmission of emotions from mind to mind, has a descriptor that comes close to conveying it: a deep, horrifying, existential dread.

Two facts: the universe has no beginning or end, and the universe is expanding. This, of course, is a paradox, and there are only a select few beings in the universe capable of understanding it. These beings are much like the universe itself: eternal, capricious, often cruel, and always indifferent to the lives of lesser creatures. They belong to a brotherhood of incomprehensible age, great power, and terrible knowledge. Burdened by the weight of their own minds, they have all gone a little mad, and obsess instead over their pet projects: the finest collection in the universe, the perfect half-breed child, the most entertaining contests of strength. Collectors, Egos, Grandmasters.

Better that most never know what they know. Better not to understand. Better not to see the face of the universe and be regarded with total dispassion. And if you must face your own insignificance, best not to do it alone.

Thor was alone now.

He’d arrived, finally, to the place where he’d last seen Loki. The spatial coordinates to this speck of void, far from any outpost, had been burned into his mind since that day. It was the graveyard of his people, a metaphorical killing field, a symbolic scorched and salted earth. But there was nothing left now to indicate the horror that had happened here. 

He searched for a while before he came to accept that.

Thor looked out. He was alone in the pod, the very small pod, and there was nothing out there. In every direction, only black emptiness and distant stars. If it weren’t for the pod’s artificial gravity, there would be no up or down. He stared and stared, and the longer he looked into the abyss, the more he felt like he was falling.

Loki could be one light year away, or a million. They could run towards each other for ten billion years and never know if the other was close. They could pass each other, in the night, in the void, without ever realizing. Thor could point his ship in one direction and fly until his bones were dust, and the view out the window would look exactly the same.

Distantly, Thor realized that he was having some difficulty breathing. Upon his noticing this, his heart began to pick up speed and his fingers began to tingle.

“Shit,” Thor could only gasp. “Shit, not now-”

He braced himself against the window of the pod, trying desperately to take deep breaths as the panic attack fell upon him like a great wave. The distant stars wavered out of focus as his vision blurred with involuntary tears, streaming hot upon his cheeks. He sat heavily down on the floor. In the silence of the pod Thor thought he sounded like a dying man, hyperventilating as if he’d been speared in the gut. In frustration, Thor slammed his fist against the window with a dull and unsatisfying thud. He wished, with tragic childlike intensity, for someone to stroke his hair and wipe his tears and take his hands and show him how to breathe again.

It seemed to take ages for the terror to pass, but pass it did, leaving Thor feeling cold and exhausted. He swiped his palms angrily over his wet cheeks and shakily stood, cursing his damned weakness, his damned helplessness, his damned inability to do anything right anymore.

He felt hollow, helpless. He should have known better than to think he could do this alone. He wasn’t strong enough, or clever enough. Years ago, he might have coasted by on sheer arrogance- confidence was itself often a kind of armor- but most of that surety had been cut away at the knees. 

His pride had taken a serious hit as well, but enough remained that he quickly discarded the idea of returning to the Guardians. Like a child who had run away from home only to return when they realized they had not planned things out further than a day. An inept young warrior too eager to prove himself, who abandons his quest to come begging for help. 

No, Thor would need help, but it wasn’t as if the Guardians knew enough to give him the kind of help he was looking for. To find Loki would take more than wits and determination; Thor would need magic. Of course, Thor had some magic of his own, but to track down his brother in a boundless universe he would need spells with much more finesse and precision than his own abilities of summoning the storm. 

Thor could vaguely recall Loki telling him about magical theory, on one of those all-too-rare occasions when Thor had bothered to listen. Once it became clear that Thor’s strengths lay in the battlefield, he gave little regard to the magic arts, even as Loki became further entrenched in them. Thor regretted now all the times that he had dismissed Loki’s passions as unimportant — it was clear to him, in hindsight, how his belittlement had planted and fed the bitterness in his brother’s heart. And he was sorely in need of those talents now.

For all that he did not care about magic, Thor did love his brother, and so he would make an attempt now and again to at least try to listen to what he was working on in his studies, though more often than not his thoughts would start to wander as soon as Loki started going into the technicalities. He could recall one such instance now, lying on a couch before the fireplace in the common room between he and Loki’s respective chambers, watching Loki bent over a book in the chair beside him and talking with great enthusiasm.

“It really is fascinating, Thor, you were born with just as much magic in you as I was, but it’s of an almost entirely different sort — it bursts out of you in great strikes, and to control it is rather like trying to rein in a bilgesnipe with your bare hands. I imagine that’s why Father gave you Mjolnir — to provide a conduit so you don’t electrocute everyone who gets close, all that magic spilling out at once like an overflowing cup.”

“Mmhmm,” Thor murmured sleepily, the fire comfortably, deeply warm on his face.

“But if you tried to use that same method on a more delicate spell, like casting an illusion or shapeshifting, it would be about as effective as trying to use your hammer to mend glass. So what I do is a work of precision and skill, but it takes just as much training and power, do you see, Thor? Thor, are you listening?”

“Mmhmm,” Thor hummed again, his eyes drifting shut.

Loki was silent for long moments, and Thor was just about to open his eyes again when he heard his brother sigh.

“I suppose it doesn’t much interest you. But what I want to know is how we inherited such different sources of magic. Elemental and alteration magic are completely separate schools, and it’s rare for members of the same family and generation to differ so sharply in predilections — no matter what Father says, I wonder if we might have some storm giant ancestors way back in the line…”

Loki’s voice was soothing, and Thor drifted to sleep shortly thereafter to the sound of it.

They had been so young then, and Loki clearly trying so hard to win Thor’s understanding. Before the strife, before the pain and the fighting … Thor often wondered how different things might have turned out, had he only listened a little harder.

In any case, it was clear that Thor could not attempt any advanced magic on his own. So he would have to enlist the help of someone who could. It was the sort of thing Loki could have done easily, but of course, Loki not being around was the whole problem. 

But where had Loki learned it all? From Mother, who was gone now, but also — he’d been sent away for a few years during their adolescence to study on Alfheim, while Thor had undergone advanced intensive training from Asgard’s military masters. He’d come back from that trip with magic simmering at the backs of his eyes and a new stride in his step, having graduated top of his class under the tutelage of the Nine Realms’ master sorcerers. Thor suspected the independent experiments he had conducted afterward during his long hours in the oldest parts of the palace library led to him outstripping even his old masters in capability, but surely they would prove capable enough to help Thor in this.

To Alfheim, then. Thor found the idea to be rather fitting — tracing his brother’s footsteps, left long ago. The disgraced king of a fallen kingdom seeking the help of those whose work he had once disregarded. The arrogant prince turned to humbled supplicant.

Despite the gravity of the situation and the shame he would surely feel upon facing the elves as he was now, Thor could not help but quirk a smile at the thought of their faces when he, of all people, arrived on their doorstep.

…

_Elsewhere..._

Gamora knew someone was following her. More than one someone, and not the usual someones — the usual being the many victims of Thanos who recognized her from her days as his most loyal child, and sought to take their own revenge.

No, these someones were less obvious, and much stranger — and more familiar. They’d taken care to split up, but Gamora had a sharp memory for faces and remembered them despite seeing them only briefly on the final battlefield against her father. The young Flora colossus, the green empath, the gray-skinned man of muscle, the small furry creature… and the Terran. The Terran who Nebula had told him her other self had loved, who had so gently touched her face and whispered, “I thought I lost you…”

She had kneed him in the balls for that, of course, but clearly he hadn’t taken the hint. He was sitting now in a shadowy corner of the bar with the gray-skinned man, pretending like he wasn’t watching her with an almost appalling amount of earnestness.

Gamora threw back the last of the worst cheap liquor this dive bar had to offer. If she’d had her way, she would have left Galador the moment she’d been identified by that pack of reavers out for vengeance. She’d quickly taken care of them and returned to her ship, only to find that she’d docked on the bad side of the planet and it had been stripped for parts in her absence. 

That was two days ago. Since then, she’d been lurking in the bars around the docks, waiting for the opportune moment to either steal or commandeer another ship, all the while fending off unwanted advances and keeping one eye over her shoulder in case any more friends of those reavers showed up. So far, none had, but Gamora almost thought she’d prefer that over this lot. She wasn’t quite sure what to make of them, which was unnerving.

No matter. The Kree by the door had passed out after his last of many drinks; she’d been watching him all day and knew he was traveling alone on a small vessel. All she had to do now was swipe his keys from his pocket on her way out and she’d be away from here at last.

Just as she was reaching for the coins to pay for her last drink, someone slid silently on to the stool next to her. She tensed reflexively and looked up. It was only the many years of Thanos’ ruthless training that kept her from showing her surprise.

Nebula. Or at least, some version of her. This Nebula did not have such deep anger and resentment in her shining black eyes, the way the Nebula she knew did. This Nebula held herself less stiffly, more confidently. This Nebula had spoken of the bonds of their sisterhood and killed her past self as readily as she had often tried to kill Gamora, in the past. This Nebula had turned against their father and helped Gamora to do the same.

“Hello, sister,” Nebula said.

“Nebula…” Gamora replied, and sighed, unsure of where to go from there. “What are you doing here?”

“Looking for you, of course,” Nebula said. “Why did you run?”

Gamora hesitated, recalling turning her back on that motley group of mourners kneeling in tribute to their man of iron and disappearing into the red sunrise. Taking a ship full of dust and fleeing into the universe, knowing no one who would welcome her, not this version of her.

“There was nothing for me there,” she said.

Nebula swallowed. “There was me,” she said. Her eyes moved over Gamora’s shoulder. “There was them.”

Gamora turned, knowing even before doing so what she would see — and there they were, all of them, standing just a few feet away and watching with quiet apprehension. The “Guardians of the Galaxy,” Nebula had said they called themselves.

“Gamora,” said the Terran. Peter Quill. “I know that you don’t … that you don’t know us, don’t care about us, but you _could_ — and you would, if you came with us. Trust me, I know. I know _you_.”

Gamora shook her head. “You don’t know me,” she said. “You couldn’t possibly.”

“But I _do_ ,” Quill insisted. He took a step forward, his eyes wide and pleading. “I know that you hate splarga noodles and you love the color of the Black Eye Galaxy and you can dance but you pretend like you can’t. I know that when you were ten years old Thanos broke both your arms and told you afterward that he loved you and was only trying to make you stronger and you believed him even as you hated him. I know that you’re afraid you’ll never be a good person after everything you did for him, and I know that you’re the best of any of us, and I know that in bed you like to be touched right on the —”

The small animal coughed, loudly and pointedly.

“Well, anyway,” Quill said. “You get my point.”

Gamora felt suddenly trapped, as if she’d been pinned down in an arena with watchers on all sides.

“I cannot go with you,” she said. “I will not. Do you understand? I am not the person you are looking for, and I will not be treated as someone else. I am not a _ghost._ ”

“Of course you are not,” muttered the muscled man. “Clearly you are not dead.”

Gamora stared at him for a moment, then turned back to Nebula.

“Sister,” she said. “Sister who is not my sister. I do love you,” she said, and paused for a moment, almost surprised at herself for having said it, before continuing, “But I do not know you. I don’t know anyone.”

Nebula looked back at her without anger — only an empty sort of sadness, a deadened sort of hope.

She felt someone moving towards her from behind, and whirled around to catch the wrist of the empath in an iron grip. Feeling the jolt pass between them, she let go in an instant, but it was too late.

“You feel lost,” the empath said, her eyes big and sad. “You are conflicted, and afraid of the strange future you find yourself in. You feel grief, and you feel guilt for that same grief.”

It was like a stab in the heart, and on reflex Gamora drew one of her knives. “Do not touch me,” she said to the empath, and, keeping her blade raised, starting moving towards the door. 

“Gamora,” Quill said, and stepped forward.

“None of you touch me,” she warned. “And do not follow me, or you will find this knife inserted somewhere very painful that will greatly reduce your chances of reproduction.”

“Gamora, don’t go,” Quill said, desperation clear in his voice. “ _Please-”_

The emotion spilling out of him only made her flee all the faster, jostling the Kree on her way out and slipping her hand into his pocket. She burst out of the bar and, pausing only a moment to draw up her hood, sprinted towards the docks, swiftly locating the Kree’s ship and climbing aboard. She powered up the navigation system, which greeted her pleasantly in the Kree language: _Where would you like to go?_

Where, indeed? Anywhere, and nowhere— she had no home now, if she ever did. Sanctuary was destroyed twice over — but even if she had grown up there, no one could call that nightmarish prison a home. The other Gamora had supposedly found a home with those Guardians, but she was not that Gamora, would never be that Gamora — even if she did go with them, she’d never share their memories of that Gamora, and would live forever in a dead woman’s skin.

The image of Quill’s face rose to the forefront of her mind, brimming with hope and desperation and that terrible, boundless love. 

Gamora spun the navigation dial to choose coordinates at random, and took off moments later. The ship had a hyperdrive, which she activated shortly after leaving the atmosphere, and the universe went by in long streams of color and light.

…

_Elsewhere, still…_

How pitiful it would be, Loki thought, if starvation were to be the end of him, after everything else he’d impossibly survived.

He’d awoken what seemed like mere moments after watching his body turn to dust, and in those first waking seconds wondered whether it had been some sort of strange hallucination, before realizing that the ship around him was far darker and colder than it had been just minutes before. A quick investigation of the systems told him that the ship was out of fuel and had gone into power-saving mode — additionally, the date was five years later than it should have been.

Seeing that had made Loki sit down and stare into the distance for a little while, imagining what must have happened. Thanos had won — his culling was the only thing Loki could think of that would kill him so swiftly and strangely. But Earth’s heroes — whatever remained of them — must have reversed that destruction, though clearly they had taken a long time in so doing.

Five years. Loki could not help but wonder what Thor had done all that time, and what he was doing now. The possibility of his death was not something he would let himself consider.

All the ship’s functions had continued on as usual after he had vanished, it seemed. The air and water recyclers were still working, so he need not fear either asphyxiation or dehydration. The navigation systems were up, so Loki knew exactly where he was — but the ship had long since run through its primary and auxiliary fuel supplies, so he had no way of going where he wanted to. There was food, but not much of it, and Loki had managed to stretch it out for several months before finally running out several days ago.

Loki’s body was more resilient than most, and it would take him a while yet to truly starve, but the initial gnawings had begun and he had little hope of rescue. He’d activated the distress signal months ago and left it running constantly, but he was far from any inhabited planet and any commonly used jump point. 

Loki was almost glad for the hunger, for it served as a distraction from the even more oppressive danger — boredom. Months without anyone to talk to, or anything to read, or even without any materials to write, was a keen torture of its own. Loki often thought wistfully and deeply of his magic, and all the ways he would be able to amuse himself if he had it still. He thought with even steeper longing of all the ways he could have gotten himself out of this situation by now, if he still had his magic. It was not a very productive line of thought.

He’d made one discovery, though, upon realizing that despite his magic having been ripped away, his body retained its Aesir appearance. His shapeshifting abilities remained intact. He didn’t know why — perhaps it was something deeper than seidr, something hardwired into his biology, something more to do with what he was than what he could do. Whatever the case, he was pitifully grateful not to be forced into his Jotun form.

The shapeshifting helped him to reserve his food and energy. He spent long stretches as various small animals, and in those forms found he needed to eat far less. He always preferred to return to his Aesir form every once in a while, though, fearing — perhaps irrationally — that if he spent too long as an animal, he would forget what he had been before. Besides, he did not like feeling any smaller than he had to, not while floating alone in this big dark universe.

Now, he had shifted into the form of a cat, and was curled up on top of the navigation panel, which threw off a bit of extra heat. Now that the food was gone, he had little to do but wait for either death or a miracle, and rather than facing the innate helplessness of his situation, he preferred to sleep. And this form seemed naturally inclined to do a lot of that. 

His mind was drifting in the space just before dreams, thinking vaguely of sunshine and warm beds and the low grumble of distant thunder. He wondered if he would see Thor when he dreamed, as he sometimes did. He usually forgot most of these dreams upon waking, like water slipping through his fingers, leaving only vague impressions behind: a gleam of light reflecting off Thor’s gold hair, or the rumble of his laugh, or his warm hands holding Loki’s face, his voice whispering, _Are you real?_

The gentle hands of deep sleep were just beginning to close around Loki and carry him down into peaceful darkness when the crackle of the ship’s comm, which Loki had not heard once in all these months, came to life.

 _“Hello?”_ it said. _“Is there someone there? I am responding to your distress call. Is there life on this ship?”_

Loki clawed quickly out of near-unconsciousness and moved to take up the comm before remembering that he was still a cat. In an instant, he shifted back to Aesir and scooped up the comm in one hand.

“Hello,” he said, and cleared his throat, his voice sounding strange from disuse. “I am here. I am in need of aid; I am alone on this ship and have run out of food and fuel.”

There was a brief pause.

“I have no fuel to spare,” came the reply. It was a woman’s voice, and vaguely familiar in a way that made Loki slightly uneasy. “However, I can offer you safe passage on my vessel, if you are not overly attached to yours.”

“Not at all,” Loki said. “To tell you the truth, I will be glad to be rid of it.”

“Alright,” the woman said. “Do I have your permission to board?”

Loki hesitated. That mild unease in his stomach had not lessened, and Loki was not usually one to ignore his gut, or dismiss it as paranoia. Still, this may be his only chance of rescue.

“You do,” he said.

The ship came into view as it maneuvered to dock with Loki’s. It bore the symbols of Kree make, and Loki racked his mind to think of any Kree enemies he may have made, but could think of none in particular. Nevertheless, he readied a dagger out of sight in his sleeve as the ship’s airlocks attached. He stood at the ready as the doors hissed apart, and the woman stepped inside.

When Loki saw her, the only thing that kept him from throwing the knife at her throat was the fact that she looked just as surprised to see him as he was to see her: Gamora, Thanos’ favorite daughter.

“You,” they said at the same moment.

Loki’s mind was racing, thinking of the last time he had seen her, kneeling faithfully before her father in Sanctuary. He thought of her face, empty of anything, as she paused to watch her siblings torture him before passing by silently. He thought of how, in the beginning, he’d scream and cry out for help, and once she’d stopped by his cell and told him, _There’s really no point to this, you know … no one is going to come for you._

Loki’s face broke into a snarl, and he launched himself at her, raising his knife. Gamora withdrew her own blade in an instant, and the two met with a sparking clash.


End file.
